


the love the wolf feels for the lamb-it-doesn't-eat

by avys



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Case Fic, Kid Fic, M/M, Obsessive Behavior, Parenthood, Will Graham Has Encephalitis
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:07:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27531235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avys/pseuds/avys
Summary: Hannibal Lecter found a child who laughed the way Mischa did.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 50
Kudos: 101





	1. like a tiger devours a lamb

**Author's Note:**

> Hannibal stole a child he treated when he was a trauma surgeon! He spent so long picking bone fragments out of her too-small ribcage that he came to the follow-up and realized that she smiled the way Mischa did, and when she laughed - her parents didn't deserve that laugh. Years later, Will opens the door to Hannibal's house and is blindsided by the fact he has a kid. Of course, no matter how sweet a child can be, Hannibal has other driving forces.
> 
> Title is from 'Stigmata' by Hélène Cixous.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from Silvina Ocampo: 'El Castigo'.

Will met Daiva first under distress. 

“Papà,” she said, voice rising, a hand clutching the edge of a vase. In the rounded curve of her face, he could see her bones like bird-wings, shining hollow with fear. “Papà, there’s a man. He just opened the door.” 

Will stumbled back out into the cooler air, pulling his hands out of his pockets, palms open. His gun was still in his hip holster, but if he kept his hands in front of him his jacket wouldn’t pull to reveal it. “The door was already open,” he offered. His heart was pounding, his breath coming short. There was little else to say; the easiest path was to succumb to the emotional weight of the girl calling for her father and feel her terror like she had never been frightened before. “I’ll just-“

“Will? Are you alright?” In the dim light, Lecter appeared almost spectre-like on silent feet, but Will watched as the girl slowly released a breath, relaxing into the hand on her shoulder. When he crossed in front of her, Lecter’s grey and red windowpane slacks matched her plaid skirt. “Daiva, this is my friend Will Graham, a profiler and teacher for the FBI. Will, my daughter, Daiva.”

Will wanted to laugh. Cry. Daiva must have taken after her mother. As she peered around his suited bulk, Lecter looked wholly unrelated except for the tan of his skin and the similarly heavy-lidded dark eyes. When she spoke, it was in a clarion, neutral voice: casually, as though they were meeting on the street, she said, “it’s nice to meet you, Mr. Graham,” with barely a tremor. 

Will doubted that. He clutched at his heart, reassuring himself that the beat was steady, though quick. “Just Will is fine,” he muttered, the pair’s selfsame stares catching him. Another point to their relation at least; Lecter’s expressions were precisely mimicked on his daughter’s face, although her thicker, sharply angled eyebrows and large rimmed glasses made her look owlishly concerned.

“Will,” said Lecter, moving closer. “Is something the matter?”

“I-“ Will stopped, eyeing Daiva, who stood behind Lecter, worrying at her skirt. “I was in the area.”

Lecter smiled gently. He obviously didn’t believe a word. “We were about to sit down for dinner, Will. Why don’t you join us?” As he spoke, he stepped forward and slipped past Will to close the door. 

The bolt fell heavily. Will felt boxed in. He cleared his throat. “I-“

“I know you’ll like the food,” said Daiva. Listening to her national newscaster-perfect emphasis and steady, though clipped diction, Lecter’s accent was suddenly much more noticeably foreign; almost mockingly so. 

Will coughed out a laugh and tried to smile. He could still taste that crystalline terror in her voice when she saw him, but she already looked so calm that it was possible she had never been worried at all. Behind him, Lecter placed a hand on his shoulder and helped him shrug his coat off. “Your company is always welcome,” he murmured, “but I know you would have expected to find me alone. We would love to have you at dinner, or you and I can step into the study first.”

Will shook his head. In the warmth of the hallway and the reassuring reality of looking at Lecter and seeing him as a real person, his tension was slowly draining. He felt trapped, but more cocooned than hurt. “I don’t want to impose,” he whispered, keenly aware of the girl still in the hallway. 

“You won’t,” said Lecter, and raised his voice to continue. “Will is the author of the forensic paper you had enjoyed, stellina. The monograph on calculating time of death through insect activity.”

Will watched her steel herself, and was reminded of a cat puffing their fur out. In her neat blazer and plaid skirt over black tights with dainty oxfords, she looked suspiciously like the darker, pouting, schoolgirl version of Lecter. Her hair was caught up in two, also neat, thick black braids, but she tossed one back and stared at Will. “I went through an entomology phase.” 

The result of having Lecter as a father was apparently a reasonable straight face and slightly inappropriate reading material. It was unthreatening, and on the whole, brought up an emotion that he was more accustomed to with dogs. “There are other papers,” he said. “Newer, at least.”

She shrugged, and continued to stare very directly at Will. It was less about maintaining eye contact, and more just appearing like she was paying attention. Keeping his eyes on the peaked lapels of her blazer, Will could relate. “Yours was easier to read.”

Will wasn’t sure whether to be insulted. Ahead of them, Lecter turned and winked almost imperceptibly. 

“That was a compliment,” said Daiva, picking up on his ambivalence. “Other people said the same thing but with more words.”

“Mant and Nuorteva,” Lecter murmured, winking at Will. “A shortcoming a number of my colleagues share. You are quite lucky to have evaded that particular pitfall.”

Daiva nodded seriously. “The pictures were nice, though!” 

When they entered the kitchen, she suddenly relaxed. Watching it on her, Will caught it on Lecter as well; a subtle loosening of his jaw, the sudden laxity of the corded muscle along his arms. As he selected a wine glass from a cupboard, hair falling out of its gelled curve and sleeves rolled to show strong forearms, he looked dimensions apart from the psychiatrist who had so calmly rubber stamped his evaluation, and a little closer to the one that had fallen asleep next to Abigail’s hospital cot. 

Somehow, watching Lecter move through his own kitchen the same way he had in the Hobbs’ tricked Will into feeling safer, as though there was something here that he should be happy with, or at least alright with. It was warm, but he was already forgetting why he was here, caught up in the current of Lecter’s motion. Involuntarily, his mouth twitched, and he raised a hand to feel at the curve of his lip before quickly redirecting to adjust his collar.

Pulling down another glass, Lecter glanced at Will. “I have a whiskey you will enjoy as well, but perhaps after dinner,” he said, pouring a deep red wine. “I think you’ll enjoy this. A Cabernet Sauvignon that will work well with the meal ahead of us.”

Will accepted the glass, watching the liquid shake with the tremors of his hand. “Thank you,” he said, tilting his wrist to swirl it. In the glass, the wine looked dark and soupy like old blood, and for a moment that’s what he saw creeping around the bulb of the glass, leaving rusty streaks behind.

“Do you like teaching, then?” Daiva said, breaking the silence. “Your academic writing is really nice. Not condescending at all.”

He blinked, and the streaks were gone, but he was holding the glass limply enough that it was halfway tilted over. She said condescending the way Lecter said rude; a moue of distaste followed quickly by a smile that invited camaraderie in displeasure. Her voice had wavered though, as if she wanted to say something else. 

“As well as anyone can,” he answered noncommittally, listening to the susurrus of Daiva’s knife on her cutting board. She was deft, standing on an adjustable stool to keep her hands at the correct angle, but fast enough to make Will uncomfortable. She must have grown up in the kitchen with a blade in her hand. Will wondered if Lecter had made her mash her own baby food, and then realized that to offer a knife in the kitchen must have been Lecter’s richest compliment of all, before staring at the glass in his hand instead.

“Education is the most powerful weapon,” murmured Lecter, barely audible over Daiva’s knife against the board and the sonata filtering through hidden speakers. 

“As long as they listen,” said Will, setting the glass down without drinking. He was too afraid that one it touched his lips it would transmute into copper-rich blood. Making a plausible excuse for Lecter, or even his daughter, seemed monumental. 

The kitchen felt rawer, and Will wouldn’t kid himself believing the change was because of him. It was warmer, physically, but the stainless steel counters and sleek appliances were less reminiscent of a surgical theatre tonight. Will wondered for a moment, what it was like living in a house that was so totally another’s. To Lecter’s guests, Daiva was not even a ghost. In the time they had worked together, Lecter had portrayed himself as a consummate bachelor, to the point that his reaction to Abigail had come off as jarringly paternal, and he had made it sound like a singular experience. 

Daiva cocked her head, a gentle reminder of Lecter’s reptilian tilt when especially interested. “Is it your fault if they don’t?”

It must be singularly lonely, in a way that Will was not. The one thing Will had seized and continued to control from the day he graduated high school, were his surroundings. He glanced at Lecter, toying with the image - a man burdened by an unexpected child that he did not want to include in his life - but the concept slid off his skin like oil on water. Still, Lecter had created a life in which his office hours to his socialite tendencies defined him as a rich, single, European eccentric, and he wove the illusion so well that it was inconceivable that space could exist for a school-aged daughter. 

And yet, Will sat and watched Daiva sliver carrots for a garnish, just as picture-perfect as her father. “I don’t choose my students,” he said. Something invited him to continue, and he took a sip of wine. He wondered if he was supposed to think of rust under the fruity, heavy taste. “I originally applied to the FBI as an agent.”

“Quantico instructors do consult with the BAU, though rarely at the rate that Will is requested,” said Lecter. “He’s a special agent in his own right.”

Will laughed. Across from him, Daiva smiled, but he hoped she didn’t get the joke. He was the joke, showing up at his psychiatrist’s house like it was his right, barging in and somehow sifting himself through their interactions until the pieces that were Will-who-could-talk-to-children fell out, rather than Will-who-was-sent-home-by-the-PI or Will-who-slit-Abigail’s-throat, or Will-who-could-not-breathe or-

“Papà says that when you feel bad, you should see if you’re hungry or thirsty,” said Daiva, directly in Will’s ear, and Will watched Lecter nod encouragingly across the counter. Her breath was warm and sweet like lavender, and she was also apparently the same height as Will. He glanced down, and realized that somehow she had dragged her stool all the way around the counter and now leaned on his shoulder to balance herself. “Or sleepy,” she added, but pulled his face away from Lecter’s shallow concern to let him see her frown. “But I’d like to talk to you, so I think you should try the other ones first.”

Lecter slid a glass of water in front of him, smiling with his eyes. “Perhaps a quick substitution for the wine before the meal,” he said, and turned back to the stove. Somehow, his casualness was surprising. Everyone liked to get close to Will except for Lecter, but he did too, didn’t he? Mentally close. Lecter wanted to peel his skin back and taste the salt that insomnia left on Will’s brain. Lecter brought him food and smiled when he joked and went out of his way to maneuver conversations into letting Will stay with him.

Next to Will, Daiva nodded aggressively. “You didn’t notice when I was talking to you, so I touched you,” she said. “Papà said it was alright.”

Lecter had? About Will, who woke up in cold sweat dreaming about knives against teenage-girl throats, about Will who lost time staring at monuments to the skill of murder, about Will who-

“-a bad voice, but I can play you something on the piano if you’d like,” continued Daiva. She leaned heavily on Will’s shoulder, trapping his head with a too-warm hand so she could speak against his ear. “But my reading voice is nice, so I could read a canto to you. Papà has been letting me read Bicchieri to him, but he smiles weirdly when I read Montessori, so maybe I can read that to you. In Italian too, if you’d like! Papà doesn’t like me reading it in English. It’s important to understand how native language changes things. The translator is another artist. Caveat lector. For some time that’s how I thought my last name was spelled. Lector, not Lecter. But that’s okay. Caveat lecter, too.”

“I don’t want to interrupt your dinner,” managed Will, when she finally took a longer breath. His heart was slowing though. Daiva’s hand on his head was Winston licking his face, rather than Jack adjusting his glasses. Less than an hour, and she was already so far away from the fear that had greeted him at the door that she got this close to his teeth, his hands, his hunger.

He wondered what that was like, to trust someone’s judgement so much that the act of letting them into a house meant that they were completely safe. Will had never had that, even when he lived in a proper house, rather than cramming into too-small apartments by the docks with his father. Mark Graham had always been better at finding a fight than safety, and Will barely escaped the same with his Wolf Trap-wilderness and pack of dogs in isolation. 

When he reached for the water, Daiva steadied his hand, and giggled. She cupped her hand around his ear, and whispered, “your hands are tremblier than mine! Papà says it’s because I got sick when I was young.”

“I think-”

“Piccolina, if you could?” Lecter turned away from the stove, still smiling.

 _I’m sick_ , finished Will, suddenly frigid as Daiva pulled away. He shivered, and immediately set the cup down when he threatened to slop water over the counter. Lecter was the type of parent who used epithets too. It seemed oddly out of character for a moment, with his emphasis on using Will’s name. Maybe it was only for children, and Lecter called his wife by her name.

His dead wife, most likely at this point. If Daiva didn’t exist in this house, there was even less to suggest that Lecter had ever been married. 

There had only been two plates set out, and when Daiva took down another, she had to bring her stool with her to reach the cabinet. Lecter moved in concert, fanning slices of seared, richly colored meat and portioning out roasted vegetables. On the third plate, a suspiciously larger portion of whatever potato mixture Lecter had created on the stove was added, and Daiva included extra pieces of carrot.

She caught Will watching and lifted her chin. “That’s my plate.”

Will smiled back, and tilted his head.

She ducked her head, charmed, and flapped a hand at Will, slipping off her stool to gather extra silverware. Walking to the dining room, she kept faltering until Will moved closer to the opposite wall, letting his feet fall heavily under the still soft piano through the speakers. He had left the water and the wine in the kitchen, but now he wished he had brought them instead, just to have something to do. Without Daiva running on like a brook, the silence suddenly felt more noticeable. Or maybe Will was just more aware.

“What do you like, then?” Daiva asked, sorting quickly through the place setting, a piece of a braid tucked into her mouth. If Will wanted to help, it would have only disturbed her. The two places already set out were across from each other, and she had chosen to set the seat at the head, before slipping into the chair on the left and watching Will expectantly. 

Somewhere, her conversational standards for Will had been revised, and most likely much lower, considering how similar her face was to Will’s when the dogs didn’t shake water off coming inside. Dogs. 

“I have dogs,” Will said. “I fish, I fix a few boat motors here and there.”

Daiva nodded appreciatively and made a show of smiling brightly at him. Exactly like when a new stray remembered to wait to get their paws wiped off. “Wow, dogs,” she said. She sounded serious, and still charmed. “Do you miss them? I miss them for you. If I had a dog I would take them everywhere.”

It was the sort of conversation children got trained out of, whether by peers or adult expectation. The pendulum didn’t move, but Will found Daiva suddenly; in the expanse of sunlit grass with carefully shaded chairs; the jasmine next to the thyme on the herb walls; the polished, splinter-free wood of Lecter’s furniture and the massive, perfect kindling piles in the fireplaces. She sat with her back to Lecter’s shock pieces, and ate none of the meat her father’s dinner parties were so famous for. In return, Lecter gave her the unspoiled innocence of childhood; fed her mind cherry-picked knowledge and carefully weighed philosophy. Artisanal experience. 

Will shouldn’t be talking to her. There was no way he fit Lecter’s design. 

And it was a design, too. For all that it was taking care of a child, Lecter orchestrated her life with a deft hand. He wondered why Lecter never talked about Daiva, or even had portraits of her in his office. She was a striking child, with nut-brown skin and big glasses and a perpetual smile that widened to show a missing incisor, and photogenic enough, even though Lecter had enough money and time that professional portraits would have been nothing to him. That was one thing that Mark Graham had insisted on; eleven dollars for the school wallet photos, and he kept older, faded candids of the face Will had been raised to know as his mother.

“There are a lot of reasons! You shouldn’t ask,” said Daiva. “I like fish though. Do you make your own lures?”

Will hadn’t realized he had asked. He cleared his throat; nodded.

Daiva nodded too, as though he continued speaking. “Must be fun,” she said appreciatively. She had chosen to focus directly at his face, but for once, Will only saw the richness of her iris through her glasses. 

“They’re nice to make,” he said. The words were rough, but easy. “When I take my dogs out, I find things to use.”

“Do you like making the lures or catching the fish?”

“One feeds into the other. Without a good lure, the fish won’t bite, but if you don’t catch something, you’ll go home hungry and won’t be able to look for more things to use in the next lure.”

She frowned. Propped her chin on her hands folded together. “Food is the most important,” she said gravely. It sounded like she was parroting something; even her accent changed as she spoke. “But do you like catching the fish or making the lures more? I want to know which one you’d let someone else do.”

She was straightforward. She was, at heart, a child. “I’m a good fisherman,” said Will. “I can work with any lure.”

That broke her stoicity. Daiva clapped her hands together, and giggled. “I read that there are a lot of knots you have to learn. Like suturing, but a lot more.” She rocked back and forth in her chair, obviously kicking her legs under the table. Will clicked his tongue, and she stilled immediately. 

He hadn’t meant to. The corner behind her was soft with shadow, and he had the eerie impression that should he look over, someone would be visible there. Hobbs would be there. “I- have you fished before?” He fumbled. “I fly-fish more than anything.”

Daiva gasped, completely unaware and unconcerned by Will’s reprimand. When she cheered, she smiled with her mouth open like a heart. “That’s what the book was about! I’ve never fished before, ever. Papà took me hunting, but he showed me how to make a trap instead of a gun, and I only went with him for a bit when he had the gun. I haven’t ever killed with a trap though, but I can make ones that do. But I don’t let anything get in those.”

Somehow, Lecter had entered the room without Will noticing. He was smiling, very gently. “At this stage, I’m afraid Daiva’s traps are an exercise in taming, rather than hunting. The same fox has been trapped four times, and lives to do the same a fifth.”

Daiva leaned in before noticing Lecter setting a plate before her, and nearly put an elbow in her salad. “I’m calling her Kaiya if she comes the fifth time. She has one ear that comes down,” she flapped her hand by her head, “like so, and she can stick it up but she doesn’t when she gets trapped. That’s how we know it’s her.”

Finally seated at the head of the table between them, Lecter smiled at Will, and offered the barest hint of a wink. 

“And,” continued Daiva. “She knows what she wants to eat and shows it to us.”

“By eating it,” allowed Lecter. Under his gaze, Will felt trapped. How had he even been allowed to speak to his daughter alone? What was Will doing here, when obviously he had gone so wrong with Abigail as well?

“Oh,” she subsided. “You’re probably very hungry, aren’t you?” she said agreeably, offering Will an understanding smile. “You should keep your energy up. Eat dinner more often.”

Lecter hummed, and Daiva finally quieted, but kept smiling at Will. “We are merely creatures of consumption,” he said calmly.

“Can’t only consume unless someone else creates,” said Will. 

“Then let us have both,” said Lecter. “The creation sits before us, and let us devour it.”

“Not whole,” said Daiva, and attempted to wink at Will the same way Lecter had. She tried twice, before switching eyes and doing it perfectly. 

“No,” said Lecter. “I’m afraid this meal is best consumed with a fork and knife. Roasted vegetables with a honey and balsamic glaze, seared and thinly sliced flank and-” he smiled at Daiva. “Pommes aligot. A selection of cheeses blended with potato until soft and warm.”

He waited, watching Will, who glanced at Daiva before cutting a piece of meat away. She watched as well, not even touching her silverware, as he set the meat in his mouth. 

It felt like he was waking up, in the warmth of the room and the warmth of the food. He nodded roughly. “Delicious,” he murmured, before scooping some aligot up. Was this food Lecter would feed Abigail as well?

Lecter smiled, but did not pick his fork up. Instead, he transferred his gaze to Daiva, who seemed perfectly content with waiting. She finally speared a piece of carrot, chewing exaggeratedly. “I think you changed the dressing,” she said. 

What had Will expected from Lecter having a child? Quizzing Daiva on whether she tasted rosemary? He settled for steadily working his way through the steak interspersed with bites of warm, cheesy potatoes. 

Absurdly, comfort food. Warm, full of cheese and fun to eat, paired with bright colored vegetables that included colored carrots. There was a conspicuous lack of brussel sprouts or broccoli in the roasted vegetables, and the glaze was flavorful and sweet. The quintessential components of a child’s meal. Will imagined Lecter with baby food and convincing a toddler to eat; had Daiva ever tasted the cereal puffs of Will’s childhood? Hot chocolate mix? When she thought about snacks, did a bag of chips ever come to mind? What was Lecter’s opinion of prepackaged juice?

“So Dr. Graham, how old are you?”

Will managed to keep chewing, and swallowed. Lecter looked mildly pained.

Daiva bristled immediately. “I asked about his work in the kitchen, and I asked about his hobbies. His work is like school and his hobbies are his ex-tra-curricu-lars. So Dr. Bloom always asks me how old I am even though time affects her the same way as me. I’m being polite!”

“I’m thirty three,” said Will, when she finally took a breath. It was incredibly hilarious, watching Lecter carefully manage to politely eat incredibly messy food like aligot and act ever so slightly human like an actual parent rather than whatever Will had seen in his eyes as they had stood in the doorway of his house. “And - it’s Will.” He wasn’t a doctor anyway.

She nodded magnanimously. “You can call me Daiva,” she said, and turned to stare at Lecter. “And you can call Papà Hannibal, then. But don’t say it weirdly.”

“Weirdly?” asked Lecter, but he was smirking, very slightly. 

Daiva impaled another carrot. “You know,” she said. She ranged from excited to sulky in less time than it took to take another bite. ”Like how they say it at the gala. Like they’re at the dentist.”

Will was glad he hadn’t chosen to take a sip of wine. “I’ll try hard not to.”

Daiva nodded very seriously. “You didn’t ask me how old I am,” she said. “That’s normal. I think only one person can ask per conversation. But I’ll tell you because you’re much older than I am, and I don’t know anyone exactly that age. Does that mean you’ve read three times as much as me?”

“I don’t think so,” said Will. Talking to Daiva made his mind go blank. It was calming in the strangest way. Like he was fishing and the sky around him was so clear that the fish begged to be caught so that they could see the sun. The opposite of Lecter, which scared him. What was the man seeing, with him feeling so different? “I don’t get that much time to read anymore.”

“I can lend you books that you can read in parts,” said Daiva, glancing at Lecter. “I mean- if you do want to read. That way you don’t have to sit. If you’re allowed to be lent books. If you can read?”

Lecter inclined his head, slightly. “You may enjoy her selections,” he said, setting his wine down. “I know I do. They’re often eclectic, but you’ve perused a few of them.”

“I have?” Will said, but recalled the sticky-noted books in the corner of Lecter’s study, as well as the few that had been removed to stay on the table. “I have,” he said more confidently.

It was a strange feeling. Sitting at the table, Lecter was content to let Daiva trample through various tangents and butcher regular dinner conversation to very forcefully direct Will into talking about his dogs again, only interjecting a gentle quip every now and then. If Will had imagined her, he would have expected a copy of Lecter; pristine and eloquent and beautiful in an untouchable, alien way.

Had Will imagined this? Their conversations about Abigail took a different tone now, watching Daiva excavate all of the important details about Will’s house, such as where the dog beds were and whether the dogs could run without stopping to the stream where he fished and back. She wanted to know how far away the trees started, and whether any particular dog enjoyed chewing on another dog’s ears, and if those ears were especially floppy. She spoke so much that Lecter appeared human and understandable in a significantly different way than Will had ever seen him, whether covered in blood staunching Abigail’s torn-open throat or examining Will in his office, smiling with his hands folded and legs crossed. The look of delight at Will’s inferences, the careful way he prodded at Will’s tender spots; it was as though a veil had been removed from one of Will’s eyes and he remembered he had binocular, rather than monocular vision.

“Of course, consider the dancer as well,” said Lecter, “where does the art end, and the self begin? The body performs, yet walks and sits and slumps against bannisters as well. Is that not a performance as well?”

“Then all of life is an art,” said Daiva, and nodded firmly. “Like fishing lures. Or training dogs!”

* * *

In the study, Lecter sent Daiva to retrieve dessert; another unexpected event in which Lecter allowed someone else to present a meal. Or perhaps Lecter was the type to attribute the successes of the child to their father. 

Somehow, Will doubted that. A patch of cold rested where Lecter’s hand had been at his back to guide him into the room, and even next to the fire, Will was colder than he had been all night. 

“Congratulations,” said Lecter, and settled into the other armchair. “You’ve made quite an impression.”

On the doctor, Will was sure. Psychiatrists, no matter how nice he found them, were patently incapable of not analyzing every conversation, and he was sure watching him interact with a girl who reminded him of everything he had not been as a child must have given Lecter plenty of ammunition. “She’s charming,” said Will. He wasn’t sure how to describe Daiva in a way that talked about what she was, rather than everything she wasn’t. 

Something bared teeth beneath Lecter’s blankness. Lit by the fire, Will felt like he could trace the lines of his bones, but where Daiva had been burning in fear, Lecter had no use for that type of illumination. It was strange how many things the doctor was not. How many things he didn’t do, to leave room for all of what he did. “She can be. A testament to your own pleasantness.” At Will’s raised eyebrow, he went on. “I rarely allow her to interact with my colleagues.”

“She must be starved for conversation,” Will said lightly. There was no way a language barrier was what had Lecter phrase his standoffishness about his daughter that way. The way even Will hadn’t noticed her until she stood right in front of him. If Lecter could hide a child in this world of his, what else was there?

Lecter smiled. “She is not. I hope you do not feel as though she intruded.”

“I don’t think you believe I would think so, or that she intruded,” said Will, watching him. The firelight gleamed in the curve of Lecter’s pupil. “Regardless of your open invitation, she still lives here, doesn’t she?”

Behind them, Daiva’s footsteps were drowned out by the crackle of the fire, but Lecter still shifted and tilted his head to smile at her approach. It took years off of his face even as it exposed far-reaching crow’s feet around his eyes. Will was supposed to see it; Lecter’s way of highlighting something, of telling Will to look, he felt about Abigail this as well. “She does,” he agreed, and Will felt warm. 

Daiva had brought only two tarts out on a small, silver tray that she held carefully, monitoring its weight. She had plated them with a swirl of whipped cream, though one of them was certainly more creamy than whipped, and laid delicate long-stemmed spoons at the edge of each plate. “It’s blackberry and lemon,” she said, shifting the tray in her hands. In the few minutes since they had left the dining room, she had returned to her standoffish worry that Will had met at the door.

Will tried to smile at her. “Thank you,” he said, and watched one side of her mouth kick up in a smile. She was eager to leave, and wasn’t good at hiding it, to the point that unlike any other child, she wasn’t even complaining about not sitting with them to eat dessert. Will understood that very well.

“Maybe if you like it, you can be at dinner again,” she said, glancing at Lecter, who smiled deeply. Her shameless attention-seeking panged something in Will’s heart that he thought he had forgotten entirely. What type of child forwent dessert to hide away, but still managed to invite a guest back?

“What a compliment,” murmured Lecter, but his eyes were soft as he watched her. Will felt inexplicably welcomed, and then thrust out into the cold again. They had kilned him into a warped shape that begged for company, but chose to quench him as though he was made of steel rather than let him cool.

“Enjoy,” she said shortly, and ducked her head. “Good night. Drive safely. If-“

“You should think of a book to give me next time,” Will cut her off, after watching her stare determinedly at a bookshelf. Whatever Lecter’s design was, he wanted to sit here again. He wanted to watch Lecter look at something like art, until it resolved into a person instead. Weeks ago, he wanted nothing to do with this, but now, as though reaching for a warm cup after trudging through a storm, he felt scalded and yet begged for more.

Daiva fumbled the tray, but caught it as Lecter reached for it as well. “Okay!” she said, focusing on him and suddenly chipper. “Good night! Be careful!”

Then she was gone. Her cutoff giggle shivered in the air, quickly dissipating in the tension that remained.

Will blinked after her. There was a rush in his head and the fire seemed closer, louder, brighter. “When she sees them, she’s too scared at the door,” said Will, thinking of Lecter’s hand on Daiva’s shoulder and the sound of her voice, raised in shock. “You probably send her off, saying she has homework, and you’ll bring her food up to her. Do you have a separate place for her to sit and eat?” The fire was higher than it had been any previous visits, and Will wondered who it was for. “You’ve thought about eating with her instead of whoever intrudes. If you really had your way, you’d have her eat in the dining room and let the guest sit in the cold.” He looked up at Lecter’s silent, reptilian stare. “When you hold gatherings, which you haven’t done recently, you’ll eat with her first. How did her mother die?”

Lecter swallowed, setting his pastry down and standing to walk over to the alcohol cabinet. “Tragically,” he said. “I only knew of Daiva for certain after her mother’s death.”

Will felt so warm he was shivering. He thought about Daiva and her trembling hands that were better than his but still weak, living with a former surgeon. He thought about his father, teaching him how to reach into a boat motor and work with a stuttering engine and hear where the weak metal was rattling. He thought about being slight enough that carrying a tray was difficult, especially with those trembling hands, and the weight of school books, of pianos, of Lecter’s smoothly muscled bulk hidden by layers of stiff fabric but still noticeable in the weight of his hands and the corded strength of his arms. 

Somehow, Lecter noticed, because he set the whiskey glass on the table, rather than trying to hand it to Will. “God, I’m sorry,” he muttered, setting the tart down to steady the glass with both hands. 

“I’m thankful to have her,” said Lecter, and when Will looked at him, setting the glass down after a healthy sip, he saw Lecter peeled back and the depths were more unreal than expected. 

It was so cold. Will was warm. It was so- “If you had your way, you’d eat with Daiva at the dining table and let the guest decide where they would stay,” he said, teeth chattering with the cold he would have felt, sitting in the car, waiting. “You wouldn’t have been rude, but you- Whoever came in, you’re thinking about-“ Would Will have waited? Would he-

Lecter looked at him and Will saw the stag snort behind him. He was so, so cold, but it wasn’t a Baltimore or Louisiana chill, but far, far worse. They were in the snow, in flimsy home clothes, they were shivering, they-

“Will? Will?”

Will relaxed his jaw as much as he could, and said through clenched teeth carefully, feeling every edge of each word out with his tongue, “I’m sorry I interrupted.”

Lecter knelt in front of him and behind him, the fire lit his hair pale-gold as it cast the planes of his face in shadow. “You have nothing to apologize for,” he said as Will frantically searched for the whiskey glass. It had disappeared entirely, but shards shone in Lecter’s smooth, over-warm eyes. “I invited you, didn’t I?”

* * *

Will woke up with Winston snuffling by his ear as he lay halfway off the bed, and considered how loudly Daiva would express her delight with his floppy ears. His hands were cold, and he hadn’t managed to take his clothes off before getting into bed, though he had kicked one shoe off by the door and the other by the dog beds. It was chilly and the sun was strangely bright.

Will thought about teaching Abigail how to fish, and felt himself shiver. His phone was at ten percent, and Jack had called four times. It was 10:23am and Will was alive and not frozen at the bottom of a stream. 

He wondered, had he been left at the bottom of such an ice-covered world, if anyone would snag a hook in the pink flesh of his jaw to pull him up.


	2. They washed his throat/and knowing nothing of his life,/contrived one for the stranger.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Rainer Maria Rilke: ‘Washing the Corpse’ tr. Steve Kronen.

The crime scene was as cold as Will by the time he arrived, trying to revive himself with a thermos of too-black coffee. One of the barn doors was swaying on a hinge, while the other had been ripped entirely off and bore the rust-streaks and torn keratin of someone trying desperately to escape. As he stepped over the threshold, he was caught up in the burning anguish of someone who knew that it was a trick, but still believed they could escape.

“They’ve been here for at least a week, Jack,” said Katz, nudging him away from the center of the barn as Price and Zeller leaped up as well. She caught Will’s eye and smiled brightly, prompting him to try and grimace back. It obviously didn’t work, but her grin widened as if congratulating him on the attempt, just like Daiva, who-

How had Will gotten home? He had driven, of course, but why had he lost time? He had been drinking through the night, but that shouldn’t have been enough to blur out the entire drive home. “Will, good that you’re here,” said Jack, turning away from Katz and letting her usher Price and Zeller away as well. “Two currently unidentified bodies that have been here for at least a week, sewn together. A neighboring farmer found them when he thought someone had broken into the barn, but neither of the victims are from any of the nearby farms, including this one. What can you tell me?”

That Will was freezing. Will could tell Jack all about the desperation that rippled past the two of them from the monument in the center, and how it did nothing to warm the radiating chill from the inside of his chest. He patted his forehead quickly, but he wasn’t even sweating. Jack didn’t even have a jacket on, and Katz had been wearing her ever-present leather jacket. “The smell makes it seem closer to two weeks,” he said, and swallowed roughly at how gravelly his voice was. If he said too much, Jack would remember his monograph and take him for some kind of anosmic expert who was comfortable staying in the barn longer than he needed to, but the gas from the overall decay must have gotten caught up in the enclosed environment. They were lucky the bodies hadn’t exploded as they decomposed. “Let me get a look.” The gritty black coffee had done him no favors, but whatever he was doing with his mouth must have been appropriate, since Jack only clapped him on the shoulder and turned to usher the straggling CSIs out with the rest.

Will wanted Hannibal’s coffee. Will wanted to remember what had happened after they had sat down to eat the tarts Daiva had been so worried to give. She had given him the one with significantly more whipped cream, although whether that had been on account of hospitality or an expectation that he enjoyed sweets was up in the air. Maybe that was her method of praise, unlike Hannibal’s more off-putting verbal acknowledgement.

He was thinking too much. Inside, the arched ceiling was much higher than the outside thatch suggested, but it was dusty and damp. This was originally an abandoned barn on the outskirts of the property, which allowed for easy access but -

_He had his hand on his throat, measuring his heartbeat._ No. Will removed his own hand from his neck. _Comparing heartbeats, because he wanted to know what made him different. What separated those who are caught, from those who catch?_ No. Will’s fingers had curled into claws, but he relaxed them. _Who says that you and I are that different?_

_If I trapped myself in a room and couldn’t get out, I would scream, wouldn’t I? I prepare charcuterie and a variety of picnic-style meals, and alternate them with those warm meals that feel like the kitchen is just a step away. When do you start noticing that there are more cold meals than hot? When do you realize you’re left with nothing at all?_

_They die because they don’t understand why they’re here. A blow to the head is too easy for them. Furthermore, that’s what I want to protect, right? I want them to think. I want them to feel._

The bodies were arranged on the floor, one straddling the other, and their arms were pulled fully around each other before being stitched together. It smelled awful. Whoever had put them together had carefully stitched fresh flesh neatly enough that weeks later, the indentations from the thread were uniform and still tight, even through the more delicate stretch of their clasped hands. The killer likely had a medical background, or some other field that put them close to decaying bodies, but there was no attempt at maintaining the integrity of bodies though; this would be a tightly sealed closed-casket funeral if they weren’t cremated.

There was only really coffee and the remains of his dinner in his stomach anyway, but Will couldn’t stop himself from making a face. “Jack?”

No one answered. He turned around to see the doors blocked by the feathered stag, ducking to enter. He didn’t want to show it these bodies, and started forward, holding his hand out. Or was it that he didn’t want the bodies to see the stag?

Katz knocked it down with an elbow. “Still got my gloves on,” she said, but she was smiling. “I got you some though. Don’t know why no one gave them to you before you came in, anyway.”

Will coughed. “I guess they thought I already had some.”

“Where would you be hiding them, in a pocket? Kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?”

He laughed because he was supposed to, and it came out much louder than expected. “Hey, Katz-”

“Beverly,” she said and elbowed him again. “Like I told you.”

“Like you told me,” he said, and tried to laugh again. It didn’t come out as strong this time, but he could tell she was proud of the effort. “ _Bev_.”

“Hey, I’ll take it.” Squatting next to the bodies, she glanced back up at him. “What’s up? You look a bit-”

“Peaky?”

“ _Bad_ ,” she corrected, “but peaky works too.”

“Do you know if Jack called Lecter about this one?”

She shook her head. “Not that I know about, although Jimmy thinks that Lecter should be on this case already.”

Will frowned. Price wasn’t as standoffish as Zeller, but he wasn’t normally leaping to bring more consultants into the field. There was no doubt he got along with Lecter, but not to the extent of actively requesting him on a fresh - or at least new - scene since the bodies had been here for so long.

“I’ve been here for two hours,” she said, and poked at the sewn together hands. “ COD is exsanguination, and we’re pretty sure they both got stabbed in the chest. Zee thinks they went up under the ribs and the diaphragm got caught. Photographers already went through, but I want more closeups before we try to cut them apart. Jimmy got stuck with the family and they’re somehow even more freaked out than I expected. Apparently, the daughter’s been having dreams about this stuff.”

Will glanced around. “About the barn?” That was decidedly more mystical sounding than he had expected, unless the daughter had somehow stumbled on the locked barn and blocked it out. Or she was somehow associated with the killer.

“About the vic’s _hands_. With the stitches and everything. Crazy, right? Parents say she was asleep until we showed up, but I guess Jimmy was in the wrong place at the wrong time and she came down the stairs screaming and wouldn’t let go of him until Brian had to calm her down.”

That seemed like the point at which Will had to say something other than asking if the daughter spent a lot of time screaming. The daughter somehow knowing details about the crime scene sounded like she was either the killer, or they were somehow part of a more fantastical world than the one Will had gone to sleep in, but that was what they said about him too. Psychic. Crazy. “Are they okay?”

“Brian was in the middle of taking the mom’s fingerprints, so don’t laugh too much when Jimmy takes his coat off, but other than that, yeah. Jack will probably want you to talk to them too.” She stood back and gestured at the whole barn. “I mean, I get it though. Creepy, right?”

Will nodded, focusing on the stitched hands again. “Creepy.”

Something about how they were laid out caught him, and he bent closer again, holding his breath as well as he could. Somehow, compared to the pigs he had used in his monograph, these smelled stronger. Maybe he was coming down with something. That would be a good week: scare a child, wake up at home and wonder what you said to your therapist, and then go to work and think about bodies smelling more than usual. “When you snip the thread, be careful around the palms. I think they’re holding something.”

“All of this happened postmortem, so it’s barely hanging on. I’m surprised there aren’t more insects involved, because the one on top has been here at least a week longer than the other guy.” Beverly stood and stripped the gloves off efficiently, apparently giving up as she tossed her hair over a shoulder. “We’ll probably take them apart here anyway if you want to watch.”

Will shook his head. “Just let me know if you find anything.” The corpses were haunting him already; watching them tear the two apart would do nothing but encourage the nightmares.

* * *

Lecter was waiting for him at the house. He stood there, framed by the rustic wood of the neat veranda as though part of a picture that only began to move once Will got there. Beside him, Beverly waved and broke off toward the huddle of forensic techs that had metastasized in front of the farmhouse’s windows, leaving Will to face Lecter alone. Dressed in a camel trench coat and holding his shucked gloves in one hand, it was as though Will was peering into another world as he ascended the stairs. “I’ll warn you,” said Lecter after a suitably warm greeting that brought hidden lines to the surface around his eyes, “Ms. Carver’s rendition of what greeted you at the crime scene is suitably morbid for its subject, but also, dare I say, a little loud.”

“Loud,” said Will, before pausing to wonder if he should bring up the missing hours after dinner. He was afraid to speak to Lecter in an odd, half-hearted way. From what he knew about last night, he had aggressively brought up the death of Lecter’s wife, his child’s anxiety around strangers, and had called the man overprotective to his face when he was clearly much more parental than Will had initially pegged him as.

Lecter looked unconcerned, at least. “Quite audibly intense,” he said. “Should she apply herself, Ms. Carver has quite a gift. Opera, perhaps.”

“Opera,” repeated Will, wondering if Lecter was purposefully attempting to confuse him and unsure how to express that he certainly had achieved said goal. “I heard Price wanted you to come along,” he said, unable to help himself. “How did you get here so quickly?”

“I was already in the area,” said Lecter. “A farmer’s market a few miles away provides some of the most beautiful honey. Manuka,” he added, as though expecting Will to agree with him.

“Can’t say I spend a lot of time at farmer’s markets,” said Will, shifting on his feet. He had enough experience buying fish on the docks when they didn’t catch their own, but little to none about anything other than shopping in the vast supermarkets that reigned in the food deserts. Farmer’s markets had been too expensive as a child, and now held a certain mystique that introverted, slightly erratic Will was not invited to take part in.

Lecter smiled again. He had been doing that quite a lot lately, but it was only now that Will was really noticing how it brought lines around his eyes and a genteel curve to his plush mouth. He wondered if Lecter would still smile like that, with the subdued warmth in his eyes and a tilt to his lips, if he knew everything that Will thought, and felt, and nowadays saw. Would Lecter have let him through the door if he had known that Garrett Jacob Hobbs still lurked in Will’s periphery? 

“Perhaps you’ll enjoy it,” Lecter said, opening the door to coax Will through. Inside, Jack sat with an older, tear-stained couple, although the wife had conspicuously more grey in her hair than her husband, who sat stolidly with his hands around a shaking mug of tea. The smell of burned food clung to the air, but all of the windows were closed with a careful line of trinkets on every sill. Carefully hewn birds of variously-grained feathers sat cosy with their kilned brethren, painted rousing red and oranges like a sunset. There were enough to populate a city when Will noticed the line marching across the lintel as well.

“Special Agent Will Graham,” introduced Jack in a low voice, and stopped the husband from rising to retrieve another chair for Will. “Will, these are the farm owners, Daisy and Maurice Carver. We’ve gotten their statements, but I want you to also talk to their daughter, Jennifer.”

Will glanced at Lecter, who smiled at him. “I can accompany you,” he said, and turned back to the three at the table. “Mr. and Mrs. Carver, I assure you that we will help your daughter in any way we can.”

The husband shivered.

As they climbed up the groaning stairs, Will cleared his throat. “Have you already talked to her?”

“Yes, soon after Mr. Price experienced his fright.”

“His fright,” repeated Will. He was doing that a lot today, but the repetition was calming. He didn’t want to say more than he had to. Something about the barn and the land and the cold that had been clinging to him since he woke up was wrong, and all he wanted to do was go back home and let the dogs cuddle up with him for some time. Something easy: make them food, let them run, wipe them off and try to sleep it all away.

Lecter was probably obsessive about sleep hygiene. He could imagine the man carefully putting every phone on Do Not Disturb and closing every curtain and laying in bed calmly before drifting off. No night terrors that he hadn’t trained out of himself, and no night sweats either. He never got up in the middle of the night, and was certainly cognizant of how much caffeine he drank before he went to bed. Will wondered if he had a sleep mask.

“Ms. Carver’s revelation came at an inopportune point, and she had to be physically restrained before calming.”

At the top of the stairs, they stood next to each other and the air was still for a second. Will could feel Lecter’s heat through his coat, and smelled the fine cedar finish of his cologne. A portrait stared down at them sternly, eyes drawn so wide and bright that they looked terrified of whatever had come up the stairs last.

In this case, it was Lecter, who remained so still that Will couldn’t tell if he was breathing. “She has retired to her bedroom at the end of the hall, and seems much calmer.”

“Just loud,” said Will dryly as he strode past the shut doors to the one with the curling vines drawn through them. Someone took pride in their work: the joy was almost physical, radiating through the hall. “Jennifer?”

“Come in,” she said hoarsely, but when he tried the door it was locked, and his hand came away dusty. Lecter stepped forward with a handkerchief and jiggled it again, pressing further to the left before it clicked open.

Inside, Jennifer sat with her back to the wall and legs crossed on the bed, staring hollowly past the door to the closet uncovered when Will closed the door behind them, wiping more dust off on his leg. “I already saw you,” she said, and turned away to press her face into the stacked pillows. She had grown up in the room, but the room hadn’t grown up with her. The bed was nearly too short and made with pale green sheets and a lovingly stitched quilt, while the desk pushed in the corner held plastic disney figurines next to glass sculptures of winged beasts. No birds lined this room. 

Will winced as the floor groaned under his feet, but gamely took another step into Jennifer’s periphery. “You haven’t seen me, Ms. Carver.” He flipped his badge open as Lecter began to pace the room, strangely silent on the creaking floorboards. “Will Graham, FBI.”

“I already talked to the FBI,” said Jennifer, but she looked up as Will pulled her desk chair out to sit on. 

“Agent Graham is trained for this,” said Lecter.

Jennifer snorted. She was a pretty girl, with wide, although tear-reddened eyes and small, though high cheekbones. There were pictures of her and her parents tacked up on the wall showing her with thick, springy hair that bloomed around her face. Today, it was all hidden until a silk cap, although little sprigs escaped to tease her forehead. “You mean I went to pieces on a guy who didn’t think he’d have to deal with a living girl.”

Will glanced at Lecter, who smiled serenely and leaned in to say, “precisely.”

“I mean how many dead girls do you get on a weekly basis, anyway?” She pushed some lank strands back from her forehead, only to find more dropping down. “Guy has to talk to more corpses than people at this point. Especially girls. Can’t blame him anyway. We’re easier to talk to when we’re dead. Less crying.”

“You’d be surprised,” said Will. “Lots of tears on this side from the parents. And the friends. And the guy on the street who sees the news and remembers his daughter. Some poor woman who looks exactly like the face on the screen.”

“Even animals will miss those who leave,” added Lecter. Will wondered how closely the case cut him, with Abigail in the hospital and, now that they had met, Daiva, skulking around his mansion. He wondered if she felt trapped. If she had ever tried the doorknob and found it tight.

Jennifer sniffed. She was crying, but without sound. Tears leaked down her cheeks gently, as though draining from the corners of her downcast eyes rather than hurting as they left. She rubbed a rough hand against her nose and resettled amidst the blankets and pillows. It was a sad fortress.

Was Lecter’s house his daughter’s fortress? Did she ever hide under her blankets, worried that there was something in the corners of the shadows that haunted such a large, overwhelming house decorated with too-many mirrors and an assortment of strangely shaped objects? Suddenly, Will desperately wanted to know how Lecter soothed her nightmares. A girl who had flinched so hard seeing someone in the doorway had them; of that, Will was sure.

“How do you know they mean it?”

“The animals?” Will knew it wasn’t about the animals.

“They’re the only ones who say it right,” she muttered, quiet enough that Will wasn’t sure if they were meant to hear it. “Not the animals,” she said, and sighed. “Everyone else.”

“Does it matter?” Lecter seemed eager to continue the conversation. Perhaps it was previously trodden ground, but Jennifer seemed to find the concept sacrosanct enough that she wasn’t easily swayed. “The grief you feel must be acknowledged. Let the others drain from your mind, Jennifer, and open your eyes to what, rather than who you have lost.”

“Safety,” she murmured, and shivered. Under the blankets, she was thin and had been ill recently enough that she hadn’t pushed her trashcan back to its rightful place by her desk, or emptied the liner of a bottle of NyQuil. A bottle of orange juice and a few packets of Emergen-C sat on her nightstand as well, but she didn’t reach for either, only pushing herself further under the comforter. No tissues though, because the rest of the can was taken up with pieces of lined paper. “I’ve lost… I’ve lost knowledge.”

“Do you know either of the people we found in the barn, Ms. Carver?”

She shook. “Why would I know? Why would I-” she took a breath and pulled the blankets over her head. Will started forward, but Lecter held a hand up and cocked his head. He waved.

Jennifer screamed.

Lecter had been pointing at his ears. Will covered his, but her shriek reverberated through his hands and beat against his skull like a physical thing in such close quarters. The blankets did nothing to dampen the sheer volume of the sound being made, and if he didn’t know better, Will would have sworn that she was either pressing her open mouth to one of his ears, or trying to give him a migraine strong enough to kill him.

It kept going, and going, and going. Will couldn’t even stand up, weighed down by the pain of listening, but Lecter still sat, firmly formal in his posture, and had begun mouthing something. When she stopped, his words seemed to bear inexorable weight, so heavy that each of them dropped an anvil on the creaking floorboards, one after the other.

“-cry is more mournful than that of any other creation on earth. She may be seen at night with a veiled face, shrouded-”

Will fumbled for a hold on the desk to stand up, starting to make his way toward the door. His hand came away dusty and immediately sticky against his palm, and he rubbed his fingers together to capture more of the fine-grained powder that clung to him and quickly dissolved.

Zeller stood outside the door, hands still over his ears. “I think the parents are hard of hearing,” he said, overemphasizing each syllable and looking decidedly aggravated about it.

Will rubbed his fingers together again. “You need to take a sample of whatever is on my hand. Or Lecter needs to figure out how to get Jennifer out of her room so you can go through it.”

“She’s already been fingerprinted and Price-”

“She’s a college student whose desk is dusty,” Will said, gritting his teeth. His hand felt grimy and slippery. “I don’t think it’s dust.”

* * *

“It’s cocaine.”

Jack looked distinctly uncomfortable, avoiding Price’s eyes as he waved the lab report. He had been the one sitting with the Carvers all the way through the screaming and then subsequent catatonia, even if Lecter had spent more time reassuring them that their daughter wasn’t dying than actually treating her. Between the two of them, Price was the one who had been closer to getting assaulted by a possible witness than him, even if Jack had spent more time assuaging their concerns. 

Zeller scoffed. “The Carvers are running a drug scheme on a farm in the actual middle of nowhere? Logistically, it makes more sense that Price is actually dealing from his backyard.”

Price shrugged and winked at Will. “Hey, Will lives pretty close by, right?”

Will sighed. “That makes no sense. Why would Jennifer be using cocaine and-” he raised his hand to forestall Zeller’s objection, “-if she was using, what addict covers their desk in an illegal drug instead of just taking it?”

“The better question is, why did no one notice?” Beverly poked at the microscope and pulled the pathology results from Price’s lax grip. “She tests positive, so fine, she might be using, but her room was literally covered in the stuff. There was more cocaine than dust, and that’s saying a lot because she’s not nearly as much of a clean freak as whoever is dusting downstairs in that house.”

Will shrugged. His head was starting to hurt, and his hand was so raw from scrubbing the dust off that flexing his fingers felt like squeezing a ball of needles. “She probably thought it was dust. And she had been feeling sick enough that cleaning wasn’t exactly a high priority.”

Price shook his head. “I’m the last person to be defending her,” he raised his hands at Jack’s scowl. “I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time! But her parents think she’s a sweet kid, and whatever they say about college students and how wild engineering students get, I don’t think she’s addicted or knowingly using. If she was, she’d be a lot more concerned about how much she wasted painting the walls with it.”

“Sure you know all about partying with engineering students,” muttered Zeller.

“It’s like pouring whiskey in your water jug,” said Beverly. “Or worse, since she’s twenty-one so that’s not even illegal.”

Jack nodded, pushing away from the counter to turn back to the bodies, which had been finally cut apart from each other. “What do you have on the bodies?”

Separate, they looked less, rather than whole, as though they couldn’t have managed to walk alone or hadn’t been originally separate. Logically, it was the decaying flesh that had puffed and then shrunk on their bones, but Will couldn’t silence the nagging thought that perhaps they shouldn’t have cut them apart at all. “The killer wanted them to kill each other,” he said, grimacing as he interrupted Price.

Zeller scoffed. “That’s why he sutured them together, right? This guy has a medical background,” he added to Jack. “Mattress stitches all the way through, even if he used some type of sewing thread to do it.”

“Not just 'some' type,” chided Price. He indicated one of the corpse’s hands and circled the stitch-marks. They were huge and moon-like, growing eyes that stared back at Will, wondering why they were no longer full.

Will shook his head.

“No?” Price sounded confused. “I really do actually enjoy quilting, and I’m not nearly as bad at it as I am with crochet. Something about the yarn.”

Will grimaced and rubbed his hand over his face. Luckily, he wasn’t wearing gloves on account of his rubbed-raw palm. “What did you say?”

Beverly frowned at him, and crossed over to unsubtly lean next to him. “Apparently Jimmy knows where to buy the thread.”

“I don’t know where-”

“It’s a craft store thing,” Beverly said. “So we’ve got a hypothetical quilting enthusiast on our hands.”

“You don’t only use it for quilts,” said Price. “It’s just a polyester-based thread. Buy it at any decent hobby or craft store.”

“You good?” Beverly murmured as Zeller finally gave into Price’s nudging, “you look-”

“Bad?”

Beverly made the type of face Will usually saw on dogs realizing they had to go see the vet. “Peaky,” she managed with a grimace, but it sounded like it hurt to even try and make the joke. Like it ate at her, from the way in and then back out. “No, I can’t do it. Bad. Want to talk about it?”

How could he? The rush of warmth in his chest warred with frustrated despair. He desperately wanted to talk to Beverly but the only way to keep talking to her was to tell her nothing at all. He wasn’t lonely. He just wanted conversation that wasn’t about the way Garrett Jacob Hobbs leaned against walls or his inability to fake competent social interaction or the way the killer wanted so desperately for his victims to take their destiny into their hands. 

He wasn’t even sure if he wanted to talk to Lecter. He wanted to go fishing, or throw sticks for the dog, or sit by the closed fireplace and get his hands filthy with oil fixing a motor or something similarly mechanical and easily controllable. He wanted to talk to Daiva, with his head so clear that the water of a stream could stand completely still and he would disregard the experience as entirely mundane.

Will managed a half-smile, but Beverly cut him off with a hand. “Did you get here when they cut the hands open?”

He shook his head. He had stayed back to talk to Lecter, but it had been a very aggressive invitation to dinner that Will had firmly declined on grounds of needing to get back to his dogs. Lecter had seemed entirely unruffled by the entire fiasco of interviewing Jennifer Carver, and even more easy with inviting Will back to his house two days in a row. Will hadn’t let him get much past the initial question before hurriedly rushing off, and he still felt some of that pent up worry. Perhaps this was what pushed them too far; an acknowledgement that Lecter existed beyond the polished gleam of his social appearance and carefully collated surroundings. 

“Nothing in there.”

“What?” Will looked up, back at the bodies. The smell was less pungent now that they had been moved away from the barn, but now they laid faceup, exposing the jagged tear of a knife that had snagged on a rib and sunk deep into one man’s heart, and had rent the lungs open on the other’s. Messy, brutal and quick. For how neat the stitchwork was, it was a crude kill that spoke to having no experience in surgery or farmwork. 

“Completely empty,” said Beverly. “The space just looked bigger from how the stitches pulled the fingers. Hey,” she snapped her fingers in front of his face. Will thought about stitches pulling them inexorably towards each other, and had to stop himself from reaching out. “Okay, did you drive here?”

“Uh-”

“No, I know you did.” She rocked back and forth on her heels, looking away before firming herself. “Look Will-”

“I was wrong about them holding something,” said Will.

“What? I thought they were holding something too. No one’s going to ding you for that. No, I’m saying you should come to dinner with me.”

Will blinked. “What?”

Beverly’s mouth twisted and she shrugged, resettling her jacket and shoving her hands in her pockets. “I’d say we could go to a bar, but you look like you need actual food. Come on, I know a great Indian place. Or we can go for Thai.” At his face, she nodded abruptly. “Great! Thai’s great. I’ve been craving some pad see ew. You want to eat there or get takeout?” She doesn’t wait for him to answer before nodding again, even more aggressively. “That’s fine, that’s fine, I think they have beer there too. My stomach is eating itself.”

* * *

Two beers in, Beverly finally decided that the word she was looking for to describe him was _shell shocked_. “I’m just-” she began, and took a fortifying gulp before biting into a spring roll. They had compromised, buying a six-pack at the drugstore next door while waiting for takeout, and had parked high up on a hill overlooking part of the park’s cultivated wilderness. Will’s pad thai was spicy and sweet, and the beer was fine for how much they had paid, but he had been wondering if there had been any other motive for Beverly corralling him into this situation other than an apparently fearsome desire for spring rolls. “You don’t look good, Will. Is the case hitting you?”

Will took a sip of his beer to avoid having to reply quickly. Beverly’s concern was sudden, and he had to stop himself from feeling it was slightly welcome. “I-”

What could he tell Beverly that wouldn’t make it sound like he wasn’t already absolutely insane and needed to be driven to a hospital next? That he needed his keys taken away and someone to come for his dogs and maybe they’d show up at his bedside but really, it would just be Will in a cage that held his body just like his mind was trapped as well. Double jeopardy and no one won except the psychiatrists that would line up outside of his door, excited that now he had nowhere to run.

“I get it,” said Beverly suddenly, and popped the top on another beer. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I think I just needed company for a bit.”

Will nodded silently, accepting the out. The air flowing through the windows was brisk but still warm with the last of the sun, and he felt comfortably full, chewing thoughtfully on a bean sprout. 

“So,” said Beverly. “My sister’s set me up with some guy.”

“How’s that going?” asked Will, gratefully taking the out.

“Well, I like the guy’s kid more than I like him.”

Will laughed before he could stop himself. 

Beverly glanced at him, before grinning. “Well, she’s ten and she wants to become a mortician, so I was obviously right up her alley. Dad’s not too excited about it. I think he’s squeamish.” She sounded thrilled.

Will felt sorry for the man. “Did he know where you work?”

She shrugged. “I guess she made it sound like I’ve never seen a corpse in my life.”

Will dipped his head. “Hair and fiber specialist, Beverly Katz.”

“Yeah, where am I supposed to get the hair from? Anyway, the kid keeps asking me about rigor mortis while we’re at dinner, and it’s kind of cute.”

“Kids are like that,” said Will, before realizing what came out of his mouth. He wasn’t drunk at all, but something about the rushed day and sudden ease of the meal had relaxed him into speaking without thinking.

Beverly cocked her head. “I know you’ve got the dogs, but do you have any family out here?”

“Uh,” said Will coherently, and then chewed his lip. “Not family. Similar situation to you, actually. She uh, she’d read my monograph.”

Beverly whistled. “I’m guessing her dad isn’t as squeamish as this guy, right?” She laughed at his expression. “Oh come on, Will. It was the way you said it. How’d you meet?”

“At dinner,” said Will, biting back a grin at her face at the elision. “She opened the door.”

“So,” said Beverly, grinning slyly, “is the kid cuter than the dad?”

Contemplating a situation in which Lecter would be called cute made Will want to curl up and let his corpse rot somewhere that it would never be found. He could die in his house and his dogs would eat him, but eventually they’d get hungry and he didn’t want that. Maybe just out in the woods, after he made sure a neighbor was checking on them. Lecter wasn’t cute, because he was the first person Will was able to say things to without later berating himself for letting it slip through his teeth. He wasn’t going to fuck this one up.

But was it so bad to slip into this back and forth with Beverly? Will liked Daiva more than he should, just like he liked her father more than he should, and just like essentially, he liked Beverly more than he should. Even Alana. After so many trespasses, what was one conversation where Will could pretend to be a normal guy talking about dating a single dad with his coworker? He didn’t have to say anything about who the father was, and even less about the fact that it hadn’t been a date but that Will had actually just showed up on his doorstep and Lecter, perpetually obliging, had decided to further endeavor to help his patient, and had actually invited him in, and then Daiva had asked about his dogs.

He wanted someone who asked about his dogs without wondering why he had so many. Daiva’s only concern had been if he had enough space, which Lecter had fielded easily, telling Daiva about the winding road to Wolf Trap and Will’s acreage of land. That was what Daiva was; a chance to be normal. Even more normal than the hazy daydreams of dating Alana, because Daiva didn’t know a thing about the type of beast Will could become at a crime scene, and likely never would. Will wondered if Lecter had brought her up that way on purpose, but that said a lot about whether Lecter saw Daiva as separate from him. He had let her plate the dessert without hesitation, and had eaten happily even with the decidedly unprofessional, though sweet attempt at whipped cream. Will would have never anticipated Lecter even allowing her in the kitchen.

The air was still sun-warm and fresh, and Will took another sip of beer. “I wouldn’t call him cute,” he drawled.

Beverly cackled and drained the last of her third bottle. “I knew you had it in you!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I really enjoy any and all feedback - whether you enjoyed something or have significant questions about my characterization, I think it's really fun to talk! I hope you enjoy this chapter; the next one will be much more character-focused!


	3. To see a World in a Grain of Sand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From 'To See a World' by William Blake in the Auguries of Innocence.

Hannibal spent days wondering what different worlds looked like, with sands of time that were reversed and extant teacups; one of which was never knocked to the ground, and the other that was not held high enough to shatter when dropped. When Daiva had been six, she became fascinated by hourglasses. Hannibal indulged her, as he often did with material pleasures. It was not indulgence at that point; Daiva was aware a significant difference between Hannibal and not-Hannibal was that physical comfort was never withheld as long as it was prompted. Hannibal had spent two winters stoking fires in every room of his house, and was prepared to spend many more examining blankets in markets for their heft and pleasing textures. 

She sat in front of the grandfather clock Hannibal had found in Palermo and brought to North America, and began asking Hannibal to relinquish his watches to her, citing their greater age as their relative importance compared to those he had furnished her slight wrists with. Even then, Hannibal had kept her in sterling watches he had his jeweler remove all but one link from, and cashmere sweaters she could wear gloves with. He chose not to push her when she sat in his study mouthing excerpts of McTaggert’s Philosophical Studies as he read, and eagerly spoke about his own recollections of Shoemaker’s Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity without further concern, until one day she set up next to the grandfather clock for the space of an hour with every timekeeping object in the household laid neatly in front of her.

She had appropriated a chair from the dining room, and stood on it in order to hold hourglasses over her head and methodically drop them at the rate of roughly one every two minutes. At twenty three minutes past the hour, a specificity afforded by every time piece existing around her, Daiva sat herself neatly on the dining room chair, set her head on her folded hands, and then promptly collapsed. Watching her rest in the grass of glass, sand, and splintered wood, Hannibal had measured the space between her neck and an especially large shard of glass. 

Blood began to leak around her, and still she did not rise. Her chest rose and fell gently, and she smelled fever-free and sweetly vanillin from her shampoo at the time, and yet neither she nor Hannibal moved. She had left her hair unbound that day, and Hannibal still questioned whether it had occurred from an understanding of aesthetics or childhood freedom, but it spread across the floor, brown and red highlights picked out of the fluffy curls, not as dark as ink or blood in the moonlight, nor as limp as one may expect of a dead body, but simply hers, as perhaps nothing else was anymore. 

At sixteen minutes before the next hour, Daiva had sat back up, glass and clay cracking around her, and in the fire of the sunlight falling behind her to touch that unbound hair through the window, Hannibal reached out and picked her out of the detritus and set her in the room of his memory palace wherein Mischa haunted as well, to provide his sister the gift of the sun perpetually caught in Daiva’s hair; a constant halo untouchable by the world. 

When Daiva opened her eyes, Hannibal had crouched in front of her, shoes crushing pieces of wood further into the floor, and with his hand at the back of her head, sunwarmed, he pressed her into his shoulder, so small that had she tried to leave, he may not have even noticed, murmuring the steps to bake pain de campagne under his breath, measuring the sound of her lungs and the sweetness of her hair before finally finding it within him to cradle her head in his hands and check her pupils.

Daiva had said nothing, but deliberately eschewed the hourglasses Hannibal had procured for her, sweeping up shards of glass with a broom with a handle nearly twice her height. She only permitted Hannibal to hold the dustpan, though he wasn’t allowed to throw the debris away, instead waiting for her to convey the pan to the trash outside and back. 

That night, Hannibal replaced every remaining hourglass with a teacup, and brewed jade tieguanyin while Daiva sat in the same dining room chair she had stood on hours ago. When they finished the pot, she trailed behind him to rinse the cups out and dry them gently. He held a hand to her face; carefully showed her the cup she had drunk out of and let her examine every perfect line of the whole, and then let it shatter. 

He let her touch the shards: he let her find the nearly-whole side and trace the clay dust settling on the floor, before sweeping it up and throwing the splinters away. That night, they slept curled under the blankets in Hannibal’s room, fire stoked to leaping heights and their bodies commas facing each other, Daiva’s hand wrapped around his fingers, her knees tucked up and face pressed to his neck, puffs of air against his skin. When he finally rolled over to stare at the ceiling, he pulled Daiva to rest on his chest, and she kicked her own legs to roll over as well and tuck her head under his chin. 

In Hannibal’s memory palace, this Daiva, somnolent and gentle, slept on a chaise with her face tilted to the moonlight through the window, silver gilding her rounded cheeks and the bulb of her nose, her hair strewn behind her on the cushions still golden and warm with trapped sunlight, while Mischa lay with her hands caught up in the trailing ends, the familiar pout she had gotten when she was sleeping deeply heavy on her face. 

Hannibal stood silently, watching them from a distance to prevent his shadow from falling on them, listening to the languorous tick of the grandfather clock standing guard in the center of the room, before slowly backing away and letting the door click shut. The path was laid out already before him, but he took his time, trailing his hands over the hourglasses stylized on the walls and the cherry blossoms that winked into existence and fell, carpeting their roots with quickly browning petals. 

Daiva’s hair caught Hannibal; he turned to open a door and escape the endless cascade of sweet smelling petals and came to stand at a brook in which she laid in repose, hands folded at her chest and hair wild in the water. The willows secluded her; an Ophelia that would only exist for Hannibal, but when he turned away, he came to stand in front of himself, fully dressed with a balthus knot snug to his throat and silver cufflinks. This one smiled close-mouthed at Hannibal, stepping closer. He seemed younger, bolder, and the scent of just-drying blood clung to him as he circled Hannibal delicately. “I miss Mischa,” he said, and the lack of pain caught Hannibal at his chest. He let the rich loss settle over him, standing still to examine the Other pacing still behind him. 

“And yet this is where you roam,” Hannibal said, smiling just as close-mouthed as his counterpart. “Do you watch them from the door as well?”

“You chose a good playmate for her,” said the Other, inclining his head with good grace. “I thought, if this one would suit, another, perhaps more similar to Mischa-“

“You mean aesthetically,” said Hannibal. “Did she not smile for you? Her eyes-“

“Like the cherubim,” breathed the Other, seemingly lost in the memory. “I waited too long.”

“You looked for another,” corrected Hannibal, but mildly. “Your Ophelia, she drown’d herself wittingly, and at her funeral, you watched them mourn her wrong.”

“She died hungry,” said the Other. “Mischa.”

“Daiva,” said Hannibal, their voices blending together.

“I partook of her parents. Her mother, she was-“

“Diseased,” said Hannibal. “Her flesh was not worth preparing.”

“I tried,” said the Other, “but once I tasted that woman’s flesh, I could not remember how sweet the girl’s blood was, nor how her eyes shone, through the bitterness and salt of that woman.”

Hannibal reached out, cupped the Other’s face. Thumbed at the fall of his hair. “There isn’t another,” he said. “Your hunger for perfection cost you-.”

“Not one like her, who you coddle into living with her eyes closed, but I see another,” said the Other. “He can see and I am watching him open his eyes, febrile as he may be he knows only me.”

Hannibal bared his teeth. He only knew Will for what he could be, but the feeling that had led him to take Mischa asked him to look at what Will was already as well. “He is the opportunity for much more,” he admitted, “but Mischa-“

“He will understand,” said the Other. The water from the brook rushed about them, and Hannibal thought about whether there would be fish for Will to catch in the turbulence. He let go of the Other to cast about for Daiva’s corpse, but his hands closed on reeds braided like her hair. “He will see. I will show him this pain. Mischa-“

“That does not honor her,” said Hannibal, and the water was cold and frothed with rage as its tides pulled him away from the Other. He wanted both. He wanted to hold Daiva so tightly to his chest that she was not even separate from him, and he wanted to lock her in a tower with no windows and a door only he could find so that she knew only him and loved only him. He wanted to take care of her the way he had not been able to take care of Mischa, and he wanted to never find her cold and small and then gone in the snow but warm in his belly. “You want him to feel-“

“I will feed her to him,” said the Other. 

Hannibal opened his eyes. He stood in the doorway of Daiva’s room, watching moonlight through the break in the curtains cast over her face and the teacups on the shelf lining the wall by her desk. She had pulled the blankets until her chin was covered, and slept like a comma under the sheets, legs pulled in. Her breathing was slow and shallow, eyes twitching under the thin skin of her eyelids. When Hannibal adjusted the drapes closed, she sniffled and covered her nose, wiggling into the pillows pressed against her back. Although Daiva would eat seafood, Hannibal was careful to limit her to scallops and fish. No oysters had ever passed her lips, nor acorns. In the morning, he would feed her scones split with clotted cream and berries, and pack a more substantial meal for her lunch so that they could enjoy a light dinner, but tonight he liberated a cup from the shelf above her desk, neatly dusted every day, and made his way back to the kitchen. 

There was a world in which he had let her go, and thought little afterwards, expecting that she would grow to be someone little like Mischa and he had only been maudlin that night. The world existed where packing lunch for another, or concerning himself over her nutrition did not exist, a world in which Will Graham came to his door and he never smiled at Daiva across the table. 

Hannibal thought about catching the teacup as it slipped out of his hand. 

* * *

Thirty minutes before seven, Daiva pretended to sneak into Hannibal’s office behind her babysitter who, after picking his lock, seemed very comfortable with herself even as Daiva clung to her waist and hid behind her back. 

“How has your day been, Ms. Ramirez Flores?”

Daiva giggled, before stifling it against Valerie’s back. Hannibal had never taught her to be quiet, and he would continue to encourage her laugh to grow, and grow. In front of her, Valerie squatted and threw her heavy, black braid over her shoulder, squaring her shoulders and raising her eyebrows. “Dr. Lecter, this has been an  _ exciting day _ , so I must speak to you about the attacker-“ She stopped, pretending to choke as Daiva threw her arms around her neck, laughing hysterically. They almost looked related, with their dark hair and dark eyes and wide features that curled the same way into a smile as Valerie tightened her grip on Daiva’s legs and hoisted her onto her back. 

Hannibal had chosen well. “It seems you have a mysterious acquaintance,” he said, sliding his notebook closed and standing up. “Who could it be?”

Daiva whispered hurriedly into Valerie’s ear, loud enough that Hannibal caught snippets, but Valerie winked at him. “No one you would know, Dr. Lecter, but I’m sure their story is not nearly as interesting as mine.”

Daiva wiggled, and dropped off of Valerie’s back. “Never mind! I wanted to see you.” She clutched at his hands and then at his shoulders, catching the back of his hair when he lifted her, legs dangling limply until he adjusted his grip. Behind her, Valerie wiggled her fingers, and dragged Daiva’s bag inside before shutting the door.

The dangerous thing about Daiva was that she meant everything she did. Hannibal had raised her that way, and had brought her up to believe that there was no other way she could be, but sometimes when she pressed her face to his and kissed by his forehead it was painful, if only because she did it with no motive. Every once in a while Hannibal closed his eyes and cherished the sharp, sanitizing pain, but today he could not. “What day is today, stellina?”

She pressed her hot face against his neck and mumbled something before mauling his collar disagreeably. When she had been younger, she had bled so often Hannibal had considered hemophilia before realizing that without guidance she was inexplicably just that clumsy. She was shaky and uncoordinated and prone to fits of exceptional fancy, but it all lit an absurdly devastating fury in Hannibal’s chest that emerged as a radiating ache in his fingers as they pressed her head closer. He didn’t ask again. 

“It’s Thursday and you don’t want to see me on Thursdays anymore.”

His shirt collar and tie were thoroughly ruined at this point, as she expressed her anger on the shoulder of his waistcoat, but her words came out clearly enough to incite a corresponding chill he had to work to keep out of his voice. This was only another part of the life that he had cultivated for himself, and like the inexorable creep of ivy, Daiva could do nothing but reflect it. “Am I seeing you now?”

She peeled her face away to pout. “Only because I told Valerie to bring me! Otherwise you would be gone.”

He knew the answers to any questions he could ask, and yet she was somehow still unexpected. Hannibal had taught her to crave his attention with an abandon that would surprise anyone else, and yet it still caught him off guard. “Would I not see you for dinner?”

She frowned. “Yes?”

“Then how could I be gone?”

“Meals are different,” she proclaimed. “You won’t ever leave me like that. But now you want to stay here and I read my book and I listened to music and Valerie and I walked outside and I miss you I miss you I-“

Someone knocked on the patients’ entrance. 

Daiva tensed, and then went totally limp, allowing Hannibal to hold her more securely. He smoothed a hand down her back and helped her scramble up the mezzanine ladder and waited until she tucked herself into the hidden nook between the bookshelves before making his way to the door. His collar was barely salvageable when he redid his tie, but reseating his suit jacket and adjusting the stick pins solved most of it.

Will Graham stood behind the door, twenty minutes ahead of schedule and well-aware of it. He had been running his hands through his hair to create such a concerning look, standing awkwardly, face half-tucked into the collar of his jacket.

Somehow, the situation left Hannibal discontented. The most appropriate option was to ask Will to wait, and to spirit Daiva away before she heard something that would cause her to reevaluate his reasons for knowing Will, but he was strangely reluctant to do so. A great deal of Will’s expected comfort as he drew him closer would be due to Daiva’s lack of ulterior motive, but a welling urge grew in Hannibal that suggested that this meeting only required a slight change in plans. He was more than capable of offsetting any change in Daiva, and since Will had never formally become his patient, he was legally and ethically free, had that been a concern he was prone to listening to.

“Am I interrupting?”

Hannibal remained still, letting Will absorb his rumpled collar but not making a move to conceal it. It was unlikely that Will could make the jump to Daiva, especially outside of a crime scene in which the variables had already been catalogued. In fact, it was more likely that he would make a different although more entertaining mistake. “You are only a few minutes early,” he granted, “but come in nevertheless. Can I offer you a drink?”

Daiva’s bag was still by the chaise where Valerie had left it, but the outside was nondescript enough that no one would expect it to be a child’s. The sweet, syrupy scent of Daiva’s skin combined with the jasmine shampoo she had lately been entertained by clung to Hannibal’s shoulder and hints of it drifted from where she had scrambled up to the mezzanine, but Will had never expressed any particular sensitivity to smell, and was more likely anosmic considering his choice in aftershave. As long as Hannibal discouraged him from attempting to gain higher ground, Daiva would be safe.

Will’s actions with Abigail had proven that it was unlikely she would ever be in danger, but there was always something gnawing and dangerous in Hannibal’s chest that wanted Daiva to never see another living person at all. Hannibal considered Will’s reflection in the decanter, and examined a bottle of as well. With a glass in hand, there was no reason that Will would attempt the mezzanine. He chose a slightly larger wine glass, and returned to Will, who had chosen his usual chair and sat with a world-weary expression. “How are you this evening?”

Will grimaced, trying to laugh. His hand trembled as he accepted the glass, and he looked away quickly with a blank, disconcerted face. Hannibal considered how his fingers would rattle were they held against his, and how Will would try to get away, butterfly-quick. The thought was normally reserved for Daiva; examining her hands for nerve damage and checking her temperature and marking her height against the wall in his bedroom - but he was compelled to lean closer for a moment, to take a slow breath to consider the progression of the fire that licks at Will’s overtaxed synapses. 

“It’s the case,” he admitted. “I was lecturing and a student said something to another, and I thought about which one would kill the other first.”

“Hypothetical battles are not uncommon,” Hannibal said, and luxuriated in the confused, terrified expression that flashed across Will’s face. “Was that not a game you played as a child? Who wins, the tigers or the lions? The elephant or the mouse?”

“A little more morbid when you’re pitting people against each other,” Will murmured, but his grip relaxed.

“On the contrary, perhaps it is not the physical altercation you imagined, but what does an interviewer do, except concern themself with the winning candidate? We consider patients battling with their diseases and anthropomorphize geological events to gauge the earth’s rage against our efforts to curtail her progression.”

“That’s man versus nature though,” Will said, but he seemed distant. His eyes slid towards the windows and half-drawn curtains, away from the mezzanine where Hannibal thought about the buzzing fear that would control Daiva right now. She would be exhausted by the time they reached her bedroom; dinner would have to be much lighter and shorter than originally anticipated. He had originally considered spaghetti squash as an appealing reward for her wait with Valerie, but he would cook for her entirely by himself instead. Something rice-based, but hearty with andouille.

“What does your killer view himself as? Man becoming the force of nature?”

A book toppled. For a moment, Hannibal entertained the thought that Will didn’t hear it, but the quickly stifled sob was quieter, but no less audible in the calm air of his office.

“Was that-”

Hannibal set his glass aside and stood up. “I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to leave.”

Will stiffened. “Your daughter is here.” His eyes were still caught on Hannibal’s collar, but his hands were no longer trembling. “Daiva.”

The opportunity to deny it had passed. There was an option where Hannibal brought Daiva down the ladder and managed an explanation that involved Will’s too-early arrival, but Daiva’s tears were only available for Hannibal. No matter how close Will got, any sorrow Daiva held was entirely Hannibal’s. There was an opportunity where Hannibal lunged and tore Will’s throat out with his bare teeth. “I’m very sorry Will, but I do-”

“It’s okay,” said Will, but his eyes were unfocused, and his mouth had slid ever so slightly open. He looked pale except for the gleam of sweat along his forehead. “I- I don’t have to listen. Do you want me to go into the waiting room? Or I can sit in the car, or leave.”

Hannibal stopped. He couldn’t smell Daiva’s tears, but he knew they existed.

Will reached out, and then faltered midair. The scent of his fever hung heavy in the air between them, and the pregnant silence only exposed his shivering throat and the jump of his pulse. “It’s okay,” he repeated.

“Stay,” said Hannibal, and chose to turn his back on Will as he made his way to the ladder. He thought about what his skin would feel like against Hannibal’s hand and how quickly the heat would dissipate with a broken neck. 

Will saw so much and so quickly, that Hannibal barely examined the thought except to let it flow through him and guide his actions. Perhaps it was not a question of worth, but whether Will would understand what Daiva was, and why she was held so closely and so safely. Had Hannibal even thought of her safety when he sent her up the mezzanine? Subconsciously, Will had already dug his fingers into Hannibal’s mind so deeply that without meaning to, Hannibal was already allowing him too close. Was it too close, or was this right? Who was Hannibal without the components that directed him to keep Daiva close and stay selfish? They weren’t components at all, but a whole-body acknowledgement, because there was no way that Hannibal could ever isolate those parts enough to tear out. And he wouldn’t want to.

He stopped just short of the ladder, and turned on his heel. In Hannibal’s office, there was nowhere for Will to go. Should he fail, there were a multitude of ways that his attempt could be rewarded. “Will,” he said, luxuriating in the flinch that Will could not hide; where his brows drew together and he seemed to wait nearly impatiently for the expected pain. “Why don’t you retrieve her?”

Will’s mouth fell open. Hannibal thought about taking pieces of his brain while he asked Will to tell him about his dreams. He thought about the racist elements to the stories about men sitting in circles waiting for waiters to tie monkeys down. He thought about tying Will down, not to a chair or the dining table or even in the kitchen, but to his bed. The delicate arc of his ribs, the arch to his wrists, his neck, his spine as he parted and washed his hair in the vast expanse of his marble bathtub, and then carried him back to lay him out on the sheets. Would Will walk and lie there, shackled already before Hannibal wound ropes around his hands, his feet, to keep him still? Would he fight, and Hannibal would clutch him tightly to restrain his flailing limbs? Or would he be serene in the throes of a fever, a pale ache suffusing him and rendering him languid and nearly sloppy.

Hannibal restrained those thoughts to a corner of the palace where the art of Botticelli hung, long graceful lines and sensually-hued thoughts. “Please,” he beckoned. He wondered if Will understood this gift he was being allowed. If his vaunted empathy extended so far that this great, mechanical beast relit with the flames of hoarse contentment was visible through the veil of Hannibal’s everyday actions. He was no longer wholly material in his filial piety, but rather an amalgamation of a creature resurrected in an unexpected way. It was understandable if Will could not see it. That - that was something he had created succor for himself. It lay curled in a ball between two bookcases above his head.

Will’s legs were shaky as he ascended the ladder. Hannibal wondered if it was the fever, or the impression of the trial he was undertaking. A journey to retrieve the golden swan, perhaps ascending the beanstalk to steal the most prized possession under the giant’s own nose. In this scenario, there was no stealing occurring, though. The beginning was Hannibal, and so the end was as well. The golden swan would cry easily for its protector. 

He considered following Will up the ladder, but instead stood next to it, closing his eyes to better examine Will’s shuffling footsteps. The susurrus of Daiva’s coat as she shifted on the floor, and the creak as Will knelt before her. Hannibal wondered if Will was whispering to keep her calm, or because he didn’t want Hannibal to hear. It didn’t matter; even by the slightest chance that Hannibal didn’t hear something, Daiva was too attached to not tell him something.

“Do you remember me?”

Daiva whimpered. Hannibal stiffened, but let the scalpel in his hand hang loosely.

Will cleared his throat. It sounded like he shuffled closer. “I’m sorry for scaring you again.”

Hannibal could imagine them; Daiva pressed as far back as she could get, shoes scuffing uselessly against the carpet to push her further back, and Will, unsure, unsteady, and desperate. His face would be drawn with self-inflicted pain that was only exacerbated by Daiva’s reactions.

Perhaps years ago, his apologies would have done her some good. She was easily scared, but she knew that was an aspect of herself. How could Will live up to the damage that had already occurred? Hannibal considered whether Daiva understood what fear really was, before disregarding it. He was the only one who could scare her now.

He heard Will inhale. “Today,” he murmured, “I woke up standing on my roof, and my dogs were whining. They,” he cleared his throat, “they didn’t… stop until they figured out that I was inside and alive.”

Hannibal could taste Daiva’s concern, but it was likely over the dogs, rather than Will himself. For every term of endearment he used, she would never be a child he called passerotta. Her wings had been clipped too short and she would never grow out of the design he had allowed her to bloom in. A miniature bonsai, giftable but requiring a patient and skilled gardener.

She must have reached a hand out, because Will’s exhale had the hint of a shudder to it. “They only wanted me safe, I think. I looked out at the sun rising and I thought about them living by themselves.”

“They’re too sweet to be alone,” said Daiva. Hannibal thought about her hand, trembling wherever it had alighted. He wondered if Will could feel her tremors through his sleeve, or if he held her hand in his and realized how thin and fine her bones were, and how her temperature always maintained a little above too warm and her nails were fine, perfect almonds, and she was at this point, likely twice as tall as Mischa ever was. 

He felt something hot behind his eyes that clawed the back of his throat. Carefully, he detached it from the conversation and let it slither away into a damp dungeon cell, of which a black-clad figure with her hair carefully bound up haunted. 

“-the soft stars that shine at night.” They had progressed from dogs to a more common subject. One of them must have pointed out the poetry on the bottom shelves. Likely Will; when afraid, Daiva maintained a more one-track mind.

“A life can be rich like the soil,” whispered Daiva, so softly that Hannibal strained to hear it. They must have gravitated toward each other at this point. He considered the curve of Will’s arm as it must rest around her, afraid to press too tightly. The only interaction Will Graham understood were the ones that were not his. “Can make food of decay/Can turn wound into highway.”

“If I could catch the feeling I would: the feeling of the singing of the real world, as one is driven by loneliness and silence from the habitable world.” Will’s voice grew stronger in the quiet, as he fell into the rhythm of the quote and dislodged himself from his halting attempts to communicate with Daiva. It would work, up until a point.

“Will,” she whispered. In Hannibal’s mind palace, she slept longer than she was ever awake; caught in the moment of soft affection on her face when she turned toward him. She danced with Mischa in her dreams as best as she could, and fell and laughed and got up with scratches up to her knees when she couldn’t, and taught Mischa to mouth words in English that Mischa would forget, just the way that had Daiva ever actually met Mischa, she wouldn’t have understood her at all. The only thing she knew about Lithuania was that someone she would later meet haunted there, but: not yet, not yet. Up on the mezzanine, she kicked a foot, noticeable only by the soft sound of carpet scuffing. “Do you always come here on Thursdays?”

A beat. “I do,” admitted Will, more confused than not.

Hannibal smiled. Above, Daiva sniffed. “Oh,” she said. “I guess that’s okay.”

“Is there something today?”

“I just-” and Hannibal felt the sweetness of her bitter-though-she-could-not-taste-it realization that she was not talking to him, and Will did not know what Hannibal did and never would. “Will,” she whispered, and Hannibal kept his eyes closed to better understand the tang of sadness she carried. “Do you like sweets?”

* * *

After dinner, Hannibal left Will to entertain Daiva as he made zabaglione. Beating the yolks, sugar, and wine was repetitive and easy as he caught the barest hints of Daiva’s laughter over Chopin’s Nocturne. His teeth felt too sharp to show and his hands craved the sensation of cutting into something more red than the chicken scaloppine he had made for dinner instead of the heartier stew that he had initially anticipated. It was a rich, soft dessert that Hannibal used to feed Daiva when she was malnourished, and he wondered if she would remember and associate it with his inability to leave her cold, or alone, or hungry, or-

That fear was ingrained in Hannibal’s marrow at this point, and no matter how hard he tried and used every mannerism he had, there were some things he could not hide. The whisk struck against the bottom of the copper pot, but even as he inhaled deeply, taking in the rich vanilla scent of the custard, he did not stop whisking, even as half-plucked notes from the harpsichord began to play. He usually preferred Daiva playing on the piano, but at this juncture it was almost significant that she had not brought Will toward the one tucked in the sitting room. Perhaps Will Graham was fated to be an experience, rather than a memory. He was sitting in Hannibal’s house with Daiva and saying something quietly that still brought Daiva to laugh as she continued playing. 

Will had seen Daiva on Hannibal in the office. He had known that she was there, and he had known how much Hannibal cared. Did he see Hannibal thinking about killing him too? Had he known that, would he have still come to dinner?

Did it matter? Will’s eyes had been so dark coming down the ladder and coaxing Daiva down into Hannibal’s arms, and he had stood there shivering while Daiva asked Hannibal if Will could come to dinner as though she thought there was a chance he wasn’t going to arrive. The nocturne faded away as Hannibal plated the zabaglione, nestling crisp biscotti in the glasses and collecting spoons as well. 

In the sitting room, Daiva stopped playing so quickly that she only played half of a chord, letting the rest dissipate in the air to rest only in their minds. She clapped her hands together and then froze. “Oh, it’s not strawberries,” she said, expecting Hannibal to have heard their entire conversation. “It’s zabaglione! I want you to like it too, okay?”

“Alright,” said Will, but he seemed much looser and at ease on the bench next to her. At some point she had gotten cold enough that rather than gravitating towards the fire as she normally did, Daiva had decided to wrap a blanket around herself, and had afforded Will a significant portion of the cashmere wool as well, although he seemed more feverish than anything. “Your daughter is very talented, Dr. Lecter.”

Hannibal smiled, more delighted with how quickly Will stiffened again than the way Daiva ducked her head and fidgeted unhappily. They must have been building a rapport in the time he had been gone for such a large reaction. It was almost a pity that Will seemed unable to adapt to Daiva as well as he managed with other people.

“Hannibal,” Will corrected, and shifted uneasily under the blanket. “She knew what I wanted to hear,” he said.

Was Hannibal happy, when he watched Daiva brighten? She curled up next to him on the settee, letting Will take an armchair in defense and nurse his zabaglione as the firelight gilded the curve of his nose and collected on his curls. Daiva had enjoyed playing for Will. Hannibal had enjoyed hearing her laugh. He had enjoyed Will’s conversation at the table, and the easy way he let himself be trapped in conversational diversions for Daiva, and how they had easily alluded to subjects Hannibal hadn’t explained to Daiva.

He could keep Will here, but would that be true to Will? How would Will feel, waking up one morning locked in Hannibal’s guestroom and manacled to the bed frame? Hannibal would provide him every luxury and necessity and they would talk about passion and ambition and Hannibal’s fears that one day Daiva would stand up and never sit back down next to him. Like Daiva, he would live according to Hannibal’s whim; there, or not at all.

It would be a half-image. Better to let Will burn and burn bright, rather than trap him as a pale imitation. “Rather than worry yourself with pitting students against each other, Will, why not ask who would stand by you instead?”

Will flinched, eyes darting to where Daiva sat propped against Hannibal and barely visible over the folds of her blanket. “I-”

“We don’t have to talk about specifics, but she’s well versed in information protection,” said Hannibal dryly. His segue had been clumsy, but would quickly soften Will; what was another boundary crossed? “Particularly that of the location of sweets.”

“Semisweet dark chocolate,” Daiva piped up obligingly. “I like the green tea kit kats too,” she said, pouting, and blinked long and slow up at Hannibal as though he held them back in any meaningful way, or didn’t feed them to her on a regular basis just to see her smile.

Hannibal was not particularly fond of them himself, except for the acknowledgement they were meant to signify after he had sent a picture to the old, treacherous Lecter estate. It had been a polaroid of Daiva laughing, reaching out for Hannibal with her unbroken right arm as he took the photo, in the time when he was so jealous that he could not bear the idea that he would not know where every image of her was. Chiyoh had so many other options, but instead she chose to instill in Daiva an apparently lifelong appreciation of a mostly artificial candy that wasn’t even made in the country she resided in.

Will grimaced, unsure. He was in some ways excruciatingly professional, and in others so overwhelmingly lonely that he wore his heart on his sleeve and let the blood drip down his fingers. “I’m not-”

Daiva beckoned to Hannibal, so he raised a hand and tilted his head towards her as she handed him her empty glass and cupped her hands around his ear. Will sat frozen in the armchair with the firelight turning his eyes glassy and warm as Hannibal watched him. He had never taught Daiva a reason to modulate her voice; what was the point, when the only one she would whisper to was Hannibal?

“Is Will worried about what wasn’t in the peoples’ hands?”

Will started forward. “How do you know about that?”

Daiva blinked at him. “It’s rude to tell someone that you can hear them.” She still smiled though, and propped herself back against Hannibal’s side. “It was in the paper.”

Will frowned at Hannibal. “You… I would have thought Dr. Lecter wouldn’t let you watch that.”

Clever, and quick at noticing things that Hannibal had yet to explain to anyone but himself. “I select a number of articles for her every week.”

Will nodded, as though Hannibal’s answer had offered him all of the pertinent information. For him, it likely did. Hannibal had spent a year careful with everything Daiva saw, from the color of the lights in the bathroom to monitoring every book she read and every word she spoke to someone who wasn’t him, but at a certain point she began to self-select herself. In school, she spoke only when spoken too, and smiled at everyone since she didn’t care about them. Her report cards spoke mostly about her lack of interest in social networking and odd topic choices. She read whatever she pleased, but when he drew her into conversation, she had none of the cultural or social touchstones that would allow her to accurately interpret an author’s intention.

At the beginning, it had been an indulgence. Now, who was Daiva if she was not kept whole and fresh like this? She would not leave Hannibal because every door that opened would always take her back to him. It was what Hannibal wanted. It was what Hannibal needed.

Will shivered, but sweat had already beaded at his hairline, darkening his curls, his fever finally overpowering his abrasive cologne. “Why care about what’s in their hands?”

Hannibal carefully set their dessert glasses aside. “Why stitch them together and keep nothing safe?”

“The killer worked really hard on it,” said Daiva, but her face split in a yawn before she could continue. “I felt bad that whatever was there escaped.”

“Or was never caught,” corrected Will absentmindedly. He tapped out a broken rhythm on his armrest, chewing his lip. “The bodies were left for a long time, but that was after they died. Uh-”

“Did the killer know the victims?”

“The killer wanted his victims to know him,” said Will. “The killer-” He stopped, caught on Daiva, who was still yawning.

“I’m awake,” she mumbled.

Hannibal traced a strand of her braid down her shoulder. “Do you want to sleep?”

She shook her head, but stood up anyway. She didn’t go as far as touching Will, but she put a hand on his armrest and leaned in until her face was level with his. “If you want, you can sleep too,” she said. “Papà always forgets his bedtime too.”

Hannibal stood as well, clearing the glasses and picking Will’s up. He would eat Will rare, to capture the sweetness of the fever. “Would you like me to tuck you in?”

“Yes, but you’re not going to sleep,” said Daiva, and crossed her arms firmly. “I think you should sleep. Talk to Will later, so that he can sleep. You said sleep was important.”

“I can go,” said Will, already beginning to stand before Daiva turned on him furiously.

“I didn’t say that!”

Hannibal passed a hand over the back of her head, feeling the warmth of her neck and the fragility of her vertebrae. “She did not,” he agreed, and knelt by her instead. “I’ll check on you before I sleep,” he said, keeping his face still and calm. 

Daiva linked her fingers with his and leaned in. “Will he sleep?”

“He doesn’t know what he’ll dream. Would you like me to tell you what you will dream?”

She shook her head. “Tell me when you go to sleep,” she demanded, and waved quickly at Will. “Next time,” she hissed in Hannibal’s ear, loud enough for Will to hear, “I want to meet his dogs. I want his dogs to come here. I want to eat turrón or cassata or portokalopita or sanguinaccio dolce,” she continued, not noticing Will’s hastily concealed laugh that he turned into a cough.

Hannibal wanted sanguinaccio dolce himself suddenly, in a world where Will offered his wrist, his neck, his thigh willingly, and Hannibal licked excess blood before it could stain the counter, dripping from his fingers while Daiva read in his study, cocooned in silence and the sound of pages turning. “Perhaps one of those wishes can be achievable,” he said gravely, and held the image of her smiling up at him in the forefront of his mind as long as possible before locking it into yet another portrait in his memory palace as she finally untangled her fingers and walked away.

He didn’t want her to walk away.

“Was she supposed to take the blanket?”

And yet, Hannibal stood and took Will in, lingering on the curl of his hair behind his ears and the thin skin of his throat. He set the zabaglione glasses aside and brought them back glasses of Garrafeira Port, strong and sweet with caramel like a tawny, and reclaimed his seat. “As they say,” he said, bringing it to his lips, “she has the run of the house.” Hannibal wanted Will to associate Daiva, and thereby Hannibal himself, with the rich, sweet taste of zabaglione and the softness of the aligot he had served at their first meal together. Will’s interest in Daiva was at once both innately understandable and deeply concerning, for the ravenous thing that stalked Hannibal’s memory palace still wanted Daiva to remain forever the same, no matter how many copies Hannibal populated the halls of the estate with.

“More than the house,” said Will, as though the words were koi in an untended stream, lazy and pushing at each other with or without acknowledgement. “Did she really see the killer on the news?”

Hannibal crossed his legs slowly, watching Will coil tighter and tighter with every passing moment. “I make it a point to answer all of Daiva’s questions, Will.”

“You had her watch it on purpose. She’s a child-”

“When was the first time you killed, Will?”

Will flinched. “You saw me,” he said rawly. “Hobbs. In their house.”

Hannibal smiled serenely. “That’s not what I meant. Did you use live bait to fish?”

Will’s mouth was open only a sliver, but Hannibal thought about speculums and ratcheting his mouth further open to see the heave and attempted swallowing of his throat; the slick movement of his esophagus and the sound of air inflating his lungs. “I- my father took me fishing when I was four. Maybe five. I couldn’t hold a rod by myself for longer, though.”

“Did he have you bait the hook?”

Will’s mouth worked. He swallowed roughly. “There’s a difference between fish eating worms and telling your daughter about bodies left in a barn for two weeks.”

“And yet, Daiva will react the same.” Hannibal smiled at Will’s cut-open expression and the glassiness in his eyes. “Her mother died when she was old enough to remember, but young enough to misunderstand. I try to maintain a rule of complete honesty on the matter of death.”

“So there are some things you don’t maintain that rule for.”

“What dessert we’ll have tomorrow, and how the world behaves are different subjects.”

Will sighed and leaned back in his chair, glass dangling loosely from work-worn hands. Hannibal wanted to examine every callus and see where the skin had worn away and what calluses Will didn’t have. “I shouldn’t be saying anything.”

“You feel paternal.”

“She’s your daughter,” said Will harshly, but subsided quickly. “I shouldn’t be commenting on your parenting.”

“You are one of the few I would allow it from.”

Will’s laugh was short; pained. “I’m one of the few that knows enough about it to say something. No, I’ve been- thinking, lately.”

“Spending a lot of time at Abigail’s bedside, Will?”

They met eyes for a brief, molten moment before Will’s gaze slid away and he hid behind his glass. “As have you, Dr. Lecter.”

Hannibal leaned back, sipping delicately. Too much, and he would have an opening to invite Will to take up the guest room, and to seat him at Hannibal’s table for breakfast and see Daiva sleepy and unconcerned. He would make crespelle alla fiorentina with fresh spinach and good, rich tomatoes and see if Daiva would try to convince him into giving her cioccolata calda instead of caffè d’orzo. “We share a bond that cannot be undone. Created in blood.”

“Is that what the killer wants? He’s not getting it. He binds his victims together because they couldn’t meet him.”

“Could his victims have understood him? A relationship in which one stands at such a distance from the other that they are not even similarly trapped is a very imbalanced relationship.”

“Like a doctor and patient?”

Hannibal smiled slowly. “Unlike you and I, Will. We are only having conversations, after all.”


	4. I am not there. I did not sleep.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from ‘Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep’ Mary Elizabeth Frye.

Hannibal’s phone rang while he was trying to remember if he had any particularly strong individuals in his rolodex. Daiva’s babysitter had quaint, rather traditional ideas, but even if her belief in eating only the strong did not pan out empirically, Hannibal had been considering a stew for some time, and meat that would hold up to slow-cooking would be ideal, especially as the temperature fell and Daiva began to express interest in snow. 

It was always a mildly painful experience, but Daiva somehow loved the eerie whiteness of the landscape and Hannibal could not bear to allow Valerie to take Daiva in the cold, no matter how long she had watched over her. It was bittersweet, seeing her eager to enjoy the catalyst of Hannibal’s desire to protect her, but perhaps that was how he knew that this time, she was safe.

This caller in particular was safe, though. No matter how resilient Will was, Hannibal would not share him, not even with Daiva. From the way he had looked in the Hobbs’ kitchen, terror-struck and pale with open horror, she would eat because Hannibal asked her to, rather than enjoy him, and Will was worth too much to squander like that.

Hannibal could let the call go to voicemail, just to concern Will, but it was an odd, late hour to call and it was more important to reward that initiative. “Hello, Will.”

The sound of ragged breathing responded. 

Hannibal toyed with the idea of continuing a conversation as though he didn’t hear it. As though there were other things he cared about. Will was appealing for the danger he represented, but Hannibal had built a carefully childproofed life in Baltimore. Will could tear that all down in a moment of that delightfully incisive intuition, except that Hannibal had in a moment of interest, chosen to cradle him so close to his chest that Will could only look away. Hannibal was the snake feeding Will venom, even though others were concerned that Will would bite him.

“It is good to hear from you,” he said gently.

Will inhaled harshly, and fabric shuffled. A dog whined. “Dr. Lecter,” he said in one great gasp. “I don’t-” The sound of wind whistling took over the rest of his sentence.

“Will?”

His door creaked open. “Will?” Daiva peered around the edge, and then pulled the door fully open and took a running leap onto his bed, followed by her comforter, trailing behind her like a cape, yelping when the edge caught on a bedpost, and then hurriedly covering her mouth with both hands, as though she could claw the noise back in. When Hannibal had began introducing her to parables in those six months of fear when he had first found her, she had firmly insisted that sound only existed as something that was heard, and even at the point that Hannibal had explained kinetic force and sound as a vibration, she was clear in her understanding that nothing was sound until it was heard. The tree, for Daiva, needed someone to listen to it.

“Was that- was that your daughter?”

Did Hannibal want to turn his attention onto Daiva, who had hidden in her room for the last two hours? He wanted to go to her and brush out her mussed braid and find her matching socks, and see if she wanted to eat because of how little she had picked at her food at dinner, eschewing even the slices of spice bread that he soaked in cream to be richer, to fill her up a little more. Will sounded weary and wind-beaten, and the sound of his dogs whining was only getting louder as he sat, slumping until the phone picked up more of the dogs’ breathing. “Where are you, Will?”

“The dogs found me. I just- I just walked out I guess.”

“I can come to you,” said Hannibal, and watched Daiva as she sat in a cocoon of sheets, shivering. He had not stoked the fire, assuming that she had gone to sleep, but one of her braids was coming undone; a sure sign she had been chewing on it again. “Are you still on your land, Will?”

“I think so. I can see- I can see my house.”

“You left a light on.” Hannibal had taught Daiva to only keep inner lights on; ones that could not be seen through any windows. She would never be fond of the dark, but she had grown up in it. All the better to keep her safe, but for Will, perhaps Hannibal would turn the lights on himself to coax him closer.

“Yes,” breathed Will. “A beacon,” he murmured, almost to himself.

“A lighthouse to guide you back to the shore. Does it look safe?” When Hannibal closed his eyes, he could almost feel Will shuddering in his grasp, heart prey-quick and flanks heaving. He reached for the shore of Hannibal’s stability. In the middle of the woods, frightened and sore, and protected only by his pack of dogs that he had brought together to protect himself, Will reached out to Hannibal.

There was something charming about the fact that Will had managed alone for so long, and yet reached out so quickly. His only other option was likely Alana, who he was desperate to fool into believing that he was well-adjusted to his stressors. It didn’t matter that Will had found Hannibal uninteresting; Will was so alone that there was no other option.

“If I go there, it’s not safe,” said Will, and translated over the phone’s dim connection, his breathing gained a shivering, hollow quality that Hannibal was suddenly eager to coax out without the barrier of a faulty signal between them. 

“Are you keeping the house safe, Will?”

“I watch it, knowing that it is safe.”

“Stay on the phone, then. I’ll come to you.” By that point, hypothermia would have likely set in, if Will wasn’t frostnipped already. Seven dogs would help, but only if they understood how to conserve heat. And yet, if he convinced Will to return to his house, the implication was that it was safe for Will by himself, rather than reliant on Hannibal’s participation.

“No,” said Will, before sneezing. “Don’t come. You don’t need to-”

“Let me impose on you, Will,” said Hannibal, picking Daiva up, blankets and all, and bringing her down the stairs with him and depositing her by her shoes.

“Uh,” said Will, sounding very, very confused. “Wait, Dr. Lecter-”

Hannibal held the phone out obligingly, and knelt to make sure Daiva was wearing two of the same-colored shoes and had tied them the same way. She accepted it eagerly, and cleared her throat. Perhaps her sulk had been about Will anyway. Her lack of significant relationships made her all the more protective of the ones she did have. “You promised,” she said, at a volume that was sure to shock Will.

Will said something unintelligible and Daiva nodded sagely. “Are they all with you? No. No. He’s trying to put shoes on.”

Hannibal had in fact finished putting both shoes and a coat on, but Daiva chewed her lip and buried her face in the scarf he began wrapping around her neck. “I don’t think you’re allowed to talk while you’re driving.”

This time, Will was clear and concerned. “You’re already driving? No - you can’t come here, Daiva. I-”

“She is eager to see you,” said Hannibal, “you are welcome to decline, but not on our account.”

“You can’t bring her here,” said Will, hushed and furious, “I barely know where I am, I don’t-”

“I would hope you could trust my judgement.”

“You’re awfully cavalier with your charge, Dr. Lecter.”

Hannibal’s lip twitched. Before him, covered in his shadow, Daiva huddled into her blanket, kicking her feet and twisting at the edges of his coat. Slowly, he unraveled the scarf she was buried in. It had been his all along. “Are you able to enter your house?”

“I’m sorry.”

“You are always welcome for dinner, Will.”

A shuddering, heaving breath and the sound of dogs barking, paws scratching on wood. “I- I’ll see you. Thank you for picking up.”

“Will. Be gentle with yourself.”

The squeal of a screen door. “I’ll see you at our appointment,” said Will, and hung up.

If Hannibal was any stronger, the phone’s plastic casing would be squealing as it bent. As it were, it took more effort to gently put the phone down than he had expended since his last display. “Piccola,” he said, and knelt to put his face close to hers. “Are you hungry?”

* * *

Daiva wouldn’t say anything to Hannibal, but she was waiting for Will to kill him.

That was how they showed her love, at least. Even the woman who Hannibal had engaged to watch over her while she couldn’t spoke of her affection in the same way. It was how Hannibal had explained his sudden appearance at her doorstep when she had been so young and so easily bruised, and how he explained why she couldn’t see her parents again. She didn’t need to eat such scum, but Hannibal had wondered if their blood would ever come out of her scalp the first time he tried to wash her after taking her away.

Hannibal couldn’t begrudge her belief. He had done nothing to assuage it, other than explaining that she would never die after him. He fed Daiva hotteok with a filling of honey, cinnamon, brown sugar and ground nuts, and when she asked for salep, he made it without question, which led to her feeling too-sweet and drinking too much water to compensate. He didn’t go out, not because he had not planned to, but because they slept curled up in the middle of his bed, having brought Daiva’s army of stuffed animals to bolster the sides. He would find feline simulacrums under his bed weeks from now.

In the morning, Daiva was more likely to think she had imagined the experience than actually assume it had happened, but Hannibal had not been taught self-deception from childhood in the same way, and even as she laid against his side with a stuffed dog too close to his face and an arm that barely reached the other side of his waist, he thought about that feeling of rage.

It had been rage, too. An offhand comment, and Hannibal had thought about throwing everything, not just Will, away. To kill Will was to set the narrative in motion and every path led to Hannibal’s discovery. Of course, he could run first, but it was strange how not even Will’s charm had appealed to Hannibal. Hearing his apology had lit something futile in Hannibal’s chest on fire, and even now, as it lay dying in the chambers of his heart, Hannibal could barely believe that he could still feel that outrage he had not felt since Murasaki.

He spent so much time thinking of Daiva and Daiva thought so much of him that there was never a possibility that he was wrong. Whatever Will was, he was not dangerous to Daiva, and both of them knew it, but in the furor of being maligned, Hannibal had not considered anything other than making sure that Will could never speak of Hannibal’s treatment of Daiva again.

A far cry from Hannibal’s initial stance of allowing Will to critique his guardianship. Somehow, half-dead in the cold, Will had touched on something so authentic that Hannibal had never even known to construct a veil for it. He wanted to prod at the bleeding place where Will’s words had touched. It was as though over the phone, Will had yanked a thorn out of Hannibal’s paw and it had been one Hannibal had not even known had existed, and had categorized it as part of his claws, but now that it had been ripped out, the aching, fevered place was something he could not help but worry at, even knowing that it would only hurt more.

Daiva sighed in her sleep, and stretched, idly curling her hands under her chin. She was barely warm under the blanket, and she frowned the same way he remembered Mischa when he was a child, when they were more equal in size.

Daiva had been-there and not-been-there. Hannibal woke up in the middle of the night thinking about how much tighter he should have held Mischa, and he dreamed about Daiva’s skull splitting open in the same instant. He thought about feeding and he thought about tasting the broth from her bones.

He thought about Will, tasting her blood from her veins.

His day was interrupted before he could even reach out to Will. Alana pulled her coat tightly around her and tried to smile. She had obviously dressed for a day teaching in a decidedly indoor classroom, rather than taking journeys to help on FBI cases. Hannibal wondered if Jack ever considered asking for displays to only be found on warmer days, but that would affect decomposition just as badly. At least this time, they were asked to profile a living person, even if that person had clearly not been near the crime scene. Jennifer Carver was the only living person tied to the case at all, but Hannibal wondered how much of the stress over the Hobbs’ case was spilling over, since Jack clearly assumed Abigail was an accomplice to her father as well.

“I don’t think you’ll be there for long,” she said, aiming for reassurance, although her forehead was still drawn with stress. “How is Daiva?”

“Well, thank you,” said Hannibal, before deciding that he was fond enough of Alana to add more. She appreciated morsels of detail appropriately, but the words always caught in his mouth; too sweet to be given to someone else. “She has become curious about faunal succession.”

“She’s interested in geology now? She’s always liked botany.” Alana had always been a little put off by how little Daiva grew to engage with her, but time was not the key to Daiva’s affection. Unfortunately for Alana, when she had first met Daiva, Hannibal had been too worried that Daiva would let something suspicious slip in front of a psychiatrist specializing in family trauma, and the fear that Hannibal’s initial paranoia had caused Daiva had never faded.

“Forensic entomology,” said Hannibal, and let her draw her own conclusions.

“You and Will are getting along, then,” she said, carefully ambiguous as always.

“I should say that he and Daiva are,” Hannibal said, ushering her into his car. They would drive together, if only to save gas, but also to talk about the case and make sure that Alana was still trying to maintain professional detachment around Will. Her overeager boundary setting was a consistent virtue, and in this case allowed Hannibal to provide a more comfortable response to Will’s wary overtures of friendship.

Hannibal appreciated Alana in more ways than he had initially expected when he had first chosen her out of a batch of only technically promising residents. Now, years later, she was the lynchpin for Daiva’s apparent social quietude and the mechanism through which he kept her solitary while entertaining his colleagues. A quick reference allowed Alana to help him shut down questions about his young, apparently introverted child, and let her reinforce their personal relationship.

She was biting her lip and fighting back the urge to comment when he buckled himself into the driver’s seat. She had worn a brighter red coat today paired with a floral blouse that Daiva would have been thrilled by, but was significantly more fidgety than when she had first opened his office door. “I’m not sure Will is very good with children, Hannibal. Or, he’s good with them, but they’re not good for him.”

“You are referring to Abigail Hobbs,” said Hannibal, and thought about making the drive much longer than it needed to be, to let Alana build up her concern over their shared trauma in the Hobbs’ killing and worry her that much more when Will talked to Jennifer Carver, but Alana would easily notice any detour. “Alana, my daughter is not Abigail-”

“I didn’t mean that,” she burst out. “But Hannibal, Will gets easily attached, and I know you two are still spending time in Abigail’s hospital room. I don’t want Daiva to feel discarded should he try to break off contact with you because of your connection with Abigail.”

That was a valid, though misguided concern. First, Hannibal had not been dissuading Will from spending time with Abigail, and would happily encourage it further, if only to dig out where she had sunk deep into his consciousness and appeared as her father as well, and second, no matter how happily entranced Daiva became by anyone, she would always care the most about Hannibal.

“I see no harm in encouraging Will’s interaction with Daiva,” he said instead. “In fact, it may help persuade him away from Ms. Hobbs’ bedside. In addition, I find Will an engaging conversationalist, even without my daughter.”

Alana looked like she didn’t know whether to laugh or not. “Have you been talking about the case?”

“And other subjects. Will seems to be under the impression that this killer, similar to Stammets, is looking for connection.”

“The updated victim profile doesn’t really suggest that,” said Alana, but her statement was accompanied by a heavy sigh. “But that doesn’t exclude the possibility.”

“Will is very good at his job.”

“It isn’t his job,” said Alana forcefully. She was gearing up to confront Jack sooner, rather than later, and was obviously excited to test her arguments against someone first. “Yes, Jack brought him on as a consultant but Will has spent the last years as a lecturer. He’s not meant to get so close to these killers.”

“He did pass his evaluation,” said Hannibal mildly.

Alana deflated quickly. “I know you’ll take care of him. I hoped that Jack would as well, but he’s too taken by Will’s closing time. And Will isn’t very good at admitting when he’s having a hard time.”

“He’s used to not accepting help.”

“He’s used to having people not have his best interests at heart,” corrected Alana, and glanced at him. “I really think you’ll be good for him, Hannibal. I’m glad that I was able to help you meet.”

The most amusing part of the confrontation was that Alana really meant it.

* * *

The Carver farm was even more carefully sanitized than the first time they had been questioned by the FBI. Will stood on the veranda, staring across the empty fields with his hands shoved in his pockets and a beanie firmly covering his ears and pressing his curls down. He was at once the guard and the guarded, skulking outside the kind family’s door and looking for what haunted them. In the daughter’s case, someone was creeping inside all of the places that she thought were safe.

“Oh, he’s already here,” murmured Alana, and stopped to greet him quickly before entering the house. She wasn't able to completely wipe her initially disapproving expression from her face, and Will was clearly aware.

He looked pale in the watery sunlight, and exhausted as well. “Jack’s inside, if you want to hear his side.”

“Are there sides to this, or merely perspectives?”

Will coughed out a smile. “I think they’re sides. He thinks the daughter has something to do with the last body drop.”

The ones so far out in the middle of farmland that Jennifer Carver had an alibi simply by being at home and texting a friend on the house’s wifi. Hannibal hadn’t been invited to the crime scene, but he had heard enough from Alana about the way Will had come back to lectures jittery and ready to bolt. Today, he looked more tired than nervous, and frustrated enough to say something about it. “I was surprised that they asked Dr. Bloom and I to visit the family, rather than the other way around.”

Will dipped his head, still looking out at the horizon. With the diffused light and his dark clothes against the harvested fields, he appeared to be part of the milieu, so at home in the barely-tamed nature of farmland that had a pack of wolves drawn by, they would have swallowed him whole in his ranks without notice. “Jennifer is sick,” he said, and in his voice he held the same type of fear he had for Abigail. He was making unnecessary connections that Hannibal itched to poke at until they frayed, but until then only caused him more pain. “It’s just easier. Plus, at least it’s on my way home.”

“Planning to take Jack with you?”

“I used to think the dogs would chase him off, but apparently he’s an animal person.”

Hannibal let his eyes rest on the curve of Will’s cheek and the dip of his mouth. Looking away, Will found it easier to deflect, but Hannibal didn’t need to press. When they sat in his office, or even in his house, Will responded. What he was seeing now was the remainder of Will’s conversations with the Carver family. Perhaps the previous night was still disturbing him. “Perhaps you can join me for a late lunch once I visit Ms. Carver. I happen to be an animal person myself.”

Will snorted, turning towards Hannibal and leaning against the railing. His gaze was on the remarkably intricate woodwork of the house, but much closer to Hannibal himself. “I think you’ve been coerced into that. Your daughter is pretty passionate.”

“I hope it has not been overbearing.”

“No, no,” Will reassured hurriedly. He wallowed for a second, shifting back and forth. “I’m sorry about last night.”

“Don’t be. I’m glad you called me.”

“I was abrupt.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “When I heard Daiva on the phone-”

“You wanted to protect her,” said Hannibal. For how much Will’s response had stung, Hannibal was pleased by its motivation. Will would learn. He was nothing, if not adaptable.

“I shouldn’t have doubted you, but I was terrified yesterday. I lashed out.”

“It was a frightening experience.”

“I didn’t want her to see me like that,” said Will, and laughed shortly. “Don’t worry about inviting me to dinner, Dr. Lecter.”

Hannibal stiffened. “If this is an attempt to avoid-”

“You don’t need to expose your kid to me just to keep me as a- to keep talking to me.”

“You make yourself sound contagious.”

Will’s jaw ticked. He seemed to turn his body towards Hannibal but look anywhere else. Surprisingly, he didn’t wear a scarf, but the skin exposed past the collar of his jacket shivered with his breathing. He seemed warm even in the bitter air. “Alana has already explained why I wouldn’t be good for Abigail.”

“Dr. Bloom and I have some differences in opinion. Will,” said Hannibal, and stepped in to put a hand on his shoulder. “Your concern is commendable, but unnecessary. Trust me to know who should be allowed around Daiva.”

“You were fine letting her listen to us talk about this. This case. These new victims... one of them is nearly her age.”

“These cases may affect her school's security procedures. She would ask no matter what, but we are only having conversations,” said Hannibal, and lifted his mouth into a conspiring smirk. “And I wouldn’t have thought you were so careful with field procedure. Jack certainly isn't.”

Will scoffed. “Well, avoiding it has worked so well for me, hasn’t it?”

“Hannibal?”

Will looked away quickly, face blanking again as he sought some apparition in the distance.

Hannibal stepped towards Alana, nodding in farewell at Will, who said nothing. He seemed ethereal in the barely-tamed wilderness, as though he could turn around the corner and dissipate like dew on spiderwebs.

Hannibal felt oddly concerned by the idea. “Does Jack have a preference for whether we talk to Ms. Carver together?”

Alana pressed her lips together, obviously weighing options. Before she could respond, Hannibal continued. “I will defer to your opinion, of course.” The kitchen smelled of a heavy spice blend that had been ground by hand and heated in oil. Cumin, asafoetida, possibly too many coriander seeds and underneath, a more than significant amount of cardamom mixed with cinnamon and nutmeg nearly done in the oven. 

It was the small things that Hannibal couldn’t take from Daiva. She called cilantro stalks coriander and she had a hard time calling cardamom powder anything but elachi. It bit at him, and the worst part was that it was all kitchen-related. She remembered nothing else from her parents, but when she ate something too spicy, it was kara, not piccante, or hot, or spicy, but words that had somehow stayed with her after years.

“The rolls are nearly done,” said Mrs. Carver to Jack. Both of them looked unhappy and crowded, sitting at a table that could seat six. Mr. Carver stood at the counter, whisking lemon and icing sugar together, and when he looked up, dodged Hannibal’s gaze before he caught more than a glimpse of bloodshot sclera.

“Dr. Lecter and I will be back quickly,” said Alana, and went directly to the stairs. Her steps drowned out Jack’s belated response.

So he had wanted Hannibal to talk to the girl alone. It was quickly becoming clear that Jack enjoyed Hannibal’s answers more than Alana’s, and that directly translated to a greater amount of shown respect. Hannibal would invite him over and feed him foie gras au torchon and sit across the table to understand what Jack fed Will to make him so dark. 

In some ways, introducing Daiva to Jack would endear Hannibal even more and, now that Hannibal had gotten access to the FBI’s profile on the Ripper, would add another confusing element. The profile ignored that someone with a surgical background likely had the basics of anesthesiology covered, or at least had access to a syringe, or barring that, had a child who had never been made hot chocolate by someone who didn’t put a sedative in it. At a certain point, the soporific effects became psychological with continued repetition.

“Has Will spoken to Ms. Carver yet?”

Jack glanced at Mrs. Carver, who glared evenly back. In the first visit, she had been thankful for Hannibal’s help in calming her daughter down, but now any FBI presence was obviously overstaying its welcome, considering that this time, the actual crime scene was on the other side of town. The photos on the drive in had been gruesome, but tastefully positioned the same way as the first scene.

Jack cleared his throat. “If you want him to come in with you-”

Mrs. Carver deliberately set her coffee down hard enough that Hannibal saw drops spray, and began fussing with the newspapers she had been pretending to read.

Jack grimaced. “We’ll see,” he said, and made to stand and exit the house. Mrs. Carver looked thrilled. “I’ll check in with him.”

Hannibal nodded at Mrs. Carver, and made for the stairs. As Jack opened the door, Mrs. Carver crossed the kitchen to stand next to her husband and hide his face. He wondered what the man’s tears tasted like. The cardamom was overpowering, but not strong enough to hide the acridity of fear.

Alana waited at Jennifer’s door, checking the time. “I thought we’d go in together,” she said. “The reports made it sound like she liked you at least.”

Hannibal had enjoyed her as well. His smile lasted until he opened the door.


	5. so that spring may not be pressed/by force into the spray of bullets.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title: Saniyya Saleh: ‘A Million Women are your Mother’ tr. Issa J. Boullata
> 
> I'm likely to return to Hannibal's POV next chapter, but I'm very interested in how IC or OOC this reads! Give me your feelings!! Thank you for reading hdhdhdh

Will nearly collapsed into Lecter’s armchair. “Amobarbital, diazepam, and doxylamine.”

“Does she have any allergies?”

“No,” said Will. His feet throbbed. He almost wished he had let Lecter drive an hour out of his way to check up on him, if only to have a medical professional pick the gravel out of his feet. The feeling of rooting around in his flesh for scraps of wood had followed him into his uneasy, sweat-soaked dreams, and he had woken up gasping for air and Lecter’s screams in his ears. “Before you ask, her family thinks anything that comes in a pill shape is poisonous. Mrs. Carver taking a Valium might die before whatever she’s taking it for even stops hurting.” 

“A rather rigid stance,” said Lecter. His screaming had tasted like iron and bittergreen. “But understandable. Did they find injection sites?”

“No,” said Will, trailing his hand along one of Lecter’s shelves.

“Our killer is not a doctor, then, nor any other type of medical professional.”

“What makes you say that?”

Lecter smiled, leaning against his desk. “Amobarbital is no longer produced in a tablet form. While a doctor or a nurse could venture to unsavory realms to retrieve it just as easily, they would also have access to many other methods not nearly as risky. Our killer was more interested in sedating Ms. Carver than risking her waking up with an injection gone wrong.”

“The risk is that Jennifer Carver’s life gets put in danger,” murmured Will. 

Lecter smiled.

“How does someone force someone to take a pill?”

“They don’t.”

“They trick you into thinking you’re taking something else,” whispered Will. 

Lecter nodded. “If you’re especially unscrupulous, crushing tablets and hiding them in food may risk absorption, but this is not a concern if you only add more.”

“Practiced in hiding pills?”

“On the contrary, it guarantees an especially delicious dessert.” At Will’s frown, Lecter smirked. “She won’t hate you, Will. You can tell her you especially chose the dessert for her.”

Will frowned. “You still want me to come over?”

“Of course.”

“Why?” Will swallowed. The bittergreen seemed even stronger now, as though he was on a precipice and Lecter was falling and he was trying to catch him with his teeth, or biting into an especially fraught piece of salad. “I was… rude to you.”

“You were distraught.” At Will’s aborted defense, Lecter raised a hand. “You were in a difficult situation and you were concerned you would harm someone young enough to be harmed. What makes you think you are dangerous, Will?”

That, Will snorted at. “Killing Garrett Jacob Hobbs didn’t convince you?”

“Did your parents shield you in the same way? If you didn’t see the danger, did it not exist?”

Will shook his head. “Lazy psychiatry, doctor.” But he relented at Lecter’s piercing gaze. “My father needed to know where the danger was to protect me from it. He rarely saw it.”

“But when he did, his only recourse was offense. A man who knew how to carry himself in a fight.”

“How many stereotypes am I falling into?” Will scoffed. “Yes, my father liked alcohol a little too much. Yes, he got into fights often enough. Defending my character.”

“Yours,” said Lecter slowly, strangely. “Not his?”

“Daddy didn’t need to defend his own. His fists spoke for him.”

“Did he believe yours wouldn’t?”

“I wasn’t- coddled, growing up.”

That same, dark-furred thing in Lecter’s gaze that had followed Will in his sleep was loose and warm in the light of his office. “Neither was I.”

Will swallowed. He felt like a predator was tracing his jugular, and had a whim to cover it up. He scratched at his nose. “I don’t want to hurt your daughter, Dr. Lecter.”

“Will,” said the doctor. “Come to dinner.”

* * *

Once again, Will saw the careful dissolution of barely-perceptible defenses in Lecter’s kitchen. This time, he ushered Will to a nook in the corner where two chairs had been set up and left him with a glass of wine. In one of them, Daiva curled up, dwarfed by the plush, burgundy blanket with huge knots of lacework and by the chair itself — a pillowy monstrosity with no resemblance to the leather armchair that Will took residence in. Lecter smiled a close-mouthed, quick thing, and glided away on too-quiet feet. Will and Daiva watched him go with unfortunately similar expressions of longing.

“Hello,” she whispered lowly, and then dragged the blanket high enough that only the tip of her nose escaped its coiled confines. 

Apologizing, whether to children or adults, had never been Will’s strong suit. “I’m sorry about last night.”

The blanket that had swallowed a child rustled. “Are you?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think you know what you’re apologizing for.”

I don’t think you know what your father wants me to apologize for, thought Will sourly, and bit his tongue before any of it came out. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to see my dogs.”

“They would have been asleep anyway. I don’t think you’re supposed to wake people up.”

“I’m sorry for waking you up.”

A knot of lace shifted furtively. “I wasn’t asleep.”

Will had called Lecter well past ten at night. “Did something wake you up?”

“You wouldn’t know,” said Daiva, and pulled her face back in after she stuck her tongue out.

Will barely managed to control a sudden bark of laughter. Luckily, Lecter added water to something sizzling on the stove and the resulting bloom of steam covered his strangled cough. 

The blanket shivered. Will conspicuously turned his head to watch Lecter move around the kitchen. He took a sip of wine, and took a moment to swill it in his mouth. Lecter was as brazen in his movement through his kitchen as the blood that had sunk into his coat in the Hobbs’ house. Will pitied the people who underestimated him, along with Lecter’s drycleaners.

Lecter’s house brought this fear out in Will; something base and animal that he rarely listened to. Surrounded by the trappings of luxurious, overwhelming humanness, Will was brought back to the roots of thought. Instinct guided him to set aside his glass; to reach his hand out; to let Daiva curl her fingers around his as he bridged the gap between their chairs. She was tactile the same way his dogs were, seeking comfort in the simple warmth of knowing that someone else was there.

Will could respect that. Will did respect that. “There is no bruise like the bruise loneliness kicks into your spine.” It had been a strange quote to type into his clunky FBI-issued laptop, and he had felt almost dirty, as though Daiva’s unfiltered sadness was numbing his fingers and tightening his throat and there was a barrier then, when he tried to repeat the experience. Letting it slip out of his mind, even into something as inhuman as a search engine, had changed something so much that he felt divorced from Daiva again, and had to scramble to recall how she should feel and react. “Andrea Gibson. I found a video clip.”

Clumsily, Daiva untangled their fingers and patted his hand. She struggled upright and rearranged the blanket until she could look at Will over the tops of her knees and smile aggressively. It looked like the exaggerated faces people made at babies and people who didn’t speak the same language - the face that said ‘you won’t understand, but I know you smile’. Again, Will was struck with the same rush of sadness and pity for Daiva, who seemed so isolated that she reached out so desperately that he worried about what would reach back. 

“Andrea Gibson,” she said. She was missing an incisor. “The Nutritionist. I can tell you about other poems, if you like. But lately I found a book about two trees, and I think you would like that.”

Will wanted to say something about age-appropriate media, or make a quip about speaking in tongues, or say something that he would say to Lecter, but he wasn’t talking to someone who was only having conversations with him, and he wasn’t talking to Jack or Alana either, who were so desperate to see him as whole or broken and not allow him to be part of one and half of another, and he wasn’t talking to Beverly either, who would take him as he was, but he was too scared to break that trust.

He was talking to a child who was angry that he hadn’t introduced her to his dogs. He was talking to a girl who quoted poets who spoke mostly about emotions that they could not control, and was unconcerned by any and all of Will’s experiences. Daiva likely didn’t know how to explain how she felt without the filter of someone else’s words. Will wondered how often Lecter’s came out of her mouth. When Hobbs settled his hands on her shoulders, it only emphasized how thin her neck was.

“Enjoying the wine, Will?”

Will blinked. Lecter had given Daiva a glass of water, and was refilling Will’s wine glass. He had rolled his sleeves up and popped two buttons on his shirt, drawing Will’s eye to the spread of his starched collar and the tan of his throat beyond that. “Sweeter than usual,” he managed.

“Tokaji wine generally is,” agreed Lecter. “I shall leave Daiva to entertain you for a while longer, while I finish preparing dinner.”

Daiva eyed Will. “He’s giving you nice wine.”

“He likes nice wine,” said Will. If there was a single bottle in Lecter’s cellar that couldn’t be characterized as nice, the next time Will wore a tie to work he would take it off during lunch and eat it instead of his usual cafeteria gruel. 

Over the rim of her glass, Daiva made a face that should have looked like a pout but instead came off like she was contemplating throwing the glass at him. “No, he’s giving you the wine that I can try. I like sweet wine.”

Will glanced at his glass. He stole a glance at Lecter, who had busied himself at the stove, and then at Daiva’s water glass. Lecter had added a lemon slice to it, but had sliced it into a translucent spiral that bobbed gently in her glass. “Is this a test?”

Daiva nodded primly.

Will nodded back, and took a too-large swallow of wine. “I’m not getting you drunk.”

“That’s not the point,” whispered Daiva. “Are you going to talk to me, or are you going to drink?”

“Can’t I do both?”

“Well,” she said, “yes. But sometimes Papà asks me to see how much you’ll drink.”

“Did he ask that?” asked Will, biting back other comments, like I thought we were past that, or shooting someone in front of you isn’t good enough, doctor? or what type of people do you leave your kid with, anyway because the last one brought up memories of his father instead, and Will waiting for him to return, and trying to sleep until his uneasy doze was interrupted by the screen door banging, and how in the end he was as rested as if he had never tried to close his eyes at all.

She shook her head, but looked unsure. Her hands twitched.

Will’s own ached. “In the winter, the fish are slow and sluggish and trapped under ice. If it’s thick enough, you can cut a hole and bait the fish that way, but you need to wait until the ice is thick enough. If it gets too warm and then cools again, the ice will refreeze but the texture will be wrong, no matter the depth. It’s rotten ice.”

Daiva shuffled again, but stopped scratching at her wrist. Will had woken up sick with warmth and something humming in his veins and he wondered if her nails would turn up the evidence under his skin. 

“In the winter, the animals may be thin, but their pelts are so pretty.”

Will resisted a smile. “Is it more important to eat, or stay warm?”

“Why don’t you hibernate?”

He shook his head. Leaned in. Thought about Lecter’s voice on Daiva’s name and the way he had sat at Abigail’s bedside and the tube, the one that ran down her throat and helped her breathe and the crispness of the sheets that Alana had sat on to read and the way he had woken up and his breath had caught because he knew where they were, he knew -

Will met Garrett Jacob Hobbs’ eyes. “We’re not made for that.”

* * *

Dinner was surprisingly unstilted by the time that Lecter got Will to the table, a few glasses of wine in. The plate of finger food that had appeared on the table between him and Daiva had only helped, along with her snide assurances that Lecter “did really care about your comfort. I’m not the only one who likes dogs, you know.” This last remark, combined with Will’s bone-deep knowledge that Lecter was the type of person to dress for dinner while eating alone, had set him on edge until he noticed Daiva had eaten all of the ricotta-related food on the platter and had her eyes on a prosciutto-wrapped melon.

Will’s father had never catered to his taste so aggressively beyond buying the brand of bread Will had liked as a child, but that had more to do with financial concerns than knowing that Will liked overly sweet white bread with peanut butter. Lecter, as he splashed a spoon’s worth of wine in her water glass (a different one from the glass that had held the lemon earlier) seemed to flaunt every way he could sweeten Daiva’s life and yet, from a wine-relaxed perspective, Will was somehow pleased by Lecter’s preening. He seemed to say to Will, as they sat across plates of freshmade tagliatelle, that he was not the monster that crept in on the walls and whose name was Garrett Jacob Hobbs, and he was not the monster who snuck into Jennifer Carver’s room to drug her, but he was the type of monster who would do anything for his child.

Somehow, Will respected that. When Lecter disappeared to the kitchen, Daiva busied herself with fumbling with her glasses and Will took a leisurely sip of wine — this one was different from the wine he had drunk while sitting in the kitchen as well. The conversation had run the gamut of topics from Lecter’s music tastes to Will’s recent lectures, but underneath it all, Will had noticed every sly allusion Lecter had made to the Carver case; as though Lecter wanted to draw attention to every way that while Jennifer Carver was finishing a degree locked in her room that would let her run anywhere from her small farm in Virginia, Daiva wouldn’t even know she needed to study.

As he sliced into the braised, rolled meat, Will felt the heat of Lecter’s consideration heavy on his face. Something about the way Lecter spiced his food, even in meals Will would have thought he was familiar with, lent itself to adding more mystery about what type of beast it had originated from. “Beef?”

Lecter inclined his head. “Braciole is commonly made with thinner slices of meat to create individual rolls, or as I have done here, with a flank cut for a larger, single roll.”

Sometimes, Will wondered if Lecter was trying to make a point, or was very used to having a small child to explain things to. On the other side of the table, Daiva was distracted by the doe skull in the centerpiece. She looked moments away from poking it back into place with her fork. Will swallowed. “It’s delicious.”

The creepiest thing about eating with Daiva was how expressive Lecter’s face suddenly became. Somehow, watching him smile now, Will could only see the blankness of his other expressions — the way Lecter stood back and watched as Will had held his hands to Abigail’s throat and felt like he was gasping for breath the way she did, the way a fish did out of water, or a gutted lamb would. His knife slid on the slick bone china. 

Across the table, Daiva wore a scarf of blood. Unlike Abigail, she didn’t choke for breath or even try to breathe. It was as though frost covered her, pale and too-young. Not even old enough to be coltish with limbs growing too quickly for everything else, but not young enough to ignore that she had lived.

She smiled at him. Her mouth was just as bloody. “That’s what you said last time.”

She didn’t know anything other than Hannibal’s careful plating and multicourse meals. She bled sluggishly compared to Abigail, as though the cold that preserved her had crept into her blood itself, to coagulate before it touched the air. If she was a crime scene, the lab results would indicate she had been dead for weeks.

Hannibal swirled his wine. “Sincerity is the only requirement.”

Will took a sip of wine and let it blossom in his mouth and ground him, rather than reply. He couldn’t imagine telling the truth.

* * *

The phone sounded like a heart-rate monitor. Will wondered if Jack worried about his blood pressure. Alana probably went to physicals religiously to make up for her high-stress job and constantly changing diet. She was tossed enough places that bag lunches didn’t make up for the amount of coffee she got offered every day. 

She had looked gilded and beautiful in the dull morning as the air had hit him like a solid force when he greeted her. “Jack wants you to go see her.”

“And you don’t.”

“Eventually.”

Will wanted to see Abigail with a desperation that surprised him with its fierceness. He thought about Daiva holding onto his fingers in lieu of managing his whole hand, and the way Abigail had lain threaded with tubes in the hospital bed. “I like you as a buffer, but Abigail doesn’t have that.”

Daiva did. Daiva had a buffer who carried her up stairs like a princess, draping her blanket like a cape behind her, and left Will in the study with a glass of whisky while they performed an obviously well-practiced bedtime that only made Daiva laugh hard enough to be heard down the stairs twice. Lecter had returned suit-jacketless and refilled Will’s glass and they had sat and talked for too long about things that eventually they didn’t need to talk about, and when Lecter escorted Will to the door, he felt as though they were parting with the expectation of a reunion. 

They had not talked about the case.

“You can’t be her everyone,” said Alana, who had spent more time pretending to warm her hands with the coffee mug than pretending to drink. She had obviously already had enough caffeine for the day, and seemed strung out already. “Don’t have to draw a line, but you might want to know where your line is.”

Will tried to smile, but from Alana’s face, it looked much more like a grimace. “Keep my distance?”

Alana visibly considered what she was about to say, but Will could read it in her face. He was already too close. He was close enough he was breathing in the scent of Downy detergent mixing with her blood. He was so close he could taste her blood and know it was different from another’s. Alana probably wondered if he woke up thinking there was still rust under his nails, but Will knew better. He woke up reaching for her. 

He shook his head. “Have you told Dr. Lecter?”

That caught her off-guard, and she was tired enough that Will could see her recalibrate for a moment. “He’s been notified that she is awake, but he can’t be the first person she talks to either.”

“Can’t trust her to know who she is?”

Alana pursed her lips. “You can’t trust you know who she is, Will. Let me reach out to her my way first.”

* * *

Horrifyingly, Will’s impulse had been to call Hannibal. He had managed until the second day when they had been cleared to see Abigail, although whether they had been cleared, or Jack had taken a judicious interpretation of what visitors she was allowed remained to be seen.

She had looked dessicated and sunken in the hospital bed while they had been wondering if she would escape her coma, but even now with her consciousness filling her limbs, she still seemed unwhole, as though something vital had seeped from the gash Garrett Jacob Hobbs had drawn across her throat and Will and Hannibal had not been able to put it back in on that bloody kitchen floor — or worse, they had not realized it had left and it was trapped in the stained linoleum floor with the remainder of that day that had started with eggs and toast for Abigail, and should they try to dig it up it would be completely changed or wholly gone.

With a sudden, furious passion, Will wished he had been there when Abigail woke up, choking on the apparatus that kept her alive and remembering how it felt for her own father to slit her throat and leave her body on the floor for others to touch, to save, unhonored. 

Hobbs’ body hadn’t been honored either. Abigail would have to decide how to take care of his body, although it had been too long for it to have kept well. Another thing Will wished he could save her from. Next to him, Lecter seemed peaceful, if not outright content after shooing Lounds away. Her card burned in his pocket, branding him under his ribs with the bloodbeat of concern, of fear, of saying softly, here is another way you’ve left her.

“Seeing her, pale but whole, must leave you fearful,” said Lecter, having ushered him to a cafeteria seat where he set their thoroughly doctored coffees down. He was dressed much more neutrally today, although not nearly as unassumingly as he had at their first meeting, in that loose sweater and thrown back hair. Will wondered how much Lecter consciously thought about the persona he presented, and how much was piece and parcel with living in a society for as long as he had. Had he thought about coordinating with Daiva, that day Will had burst in? What a strange design that had been.

For a fleeting, heartbreaking moment, Will thought about Abigail where Daiva was. Where had Daiva thought her father was all of those days he had spent by Abigail’s bedside? In fact, where did she think he was when he had come all the way to Minnesota with them?

“You seem uneasy,” said Lecter. “The coffee is certainly terrible, but the explanation does not require as much depth as you seem to be looking for.”

“Jack’s asking us to bring Abigail to Minnesota when I go back through the cabin,” said Will.

Lecter dipped his head. “Dr. Bloom and I will be accompanying her, of course.”

“What about your daughter?”

Something dark flared its wings in Lecter’s eyes, long enough that it felt imprinted on Will’s. “She won’t be joining us, if you’re so concerned, Will. She has asked about you as well.”

Will nodded jerkily.

“What should I tell her?”

Will felt isolated and trapped, sitting in the seat across from Lecter. He cleared his throat twice and rapped his knuckles against the too-thin styrofoam cup, feeling the heat against his fingers. “It was nice seeing her,” he said, focusing on the thin pinstriping of Lecter’s suit and the crisp paleness of his starched collar.

“She will be delighted to hear that,” said Lecter, and the tension drained as though it had never been there.

Will felt like he had been left wanting. Disappointment churned in his stomach and he felt his gorge rise up. Last night, he had dreamed about Lecter trapping his daughter in a maze and walking behind her until the very last turn where the sunlight shone on the walls, and Daiva had looked directly at the light and turned towards her father to allow him to guide her away. Will had screamed and screamed and screamed, and she had run towards him and he had caught her up in his arms, but he had been at the center of the maze, nowhere near where the light had crept in. 

He wouldn’t be explaining that one to Lecter for any reason. “Is Daiva going to be alright while you’re gone?”

Lecter blinked slowly. “I have a babysitter on hand for situations like this.”

Will remembered the crisp, heartbreaking terror of Daiva seeing him at the door, eyes blown wide open and hands clutching for balance, and the quick calm that had immediately returned when Lecter had known Will. A design like that, thought Will, so perfectly balanced on the knife’s edge of fear, and Lecter had a babysitter. He could feel his face contorting, and quickly took a sip of too-hot coffee, letting the grimace show from the pain on his tongue.

Will hadn’t expected this, or his own reaction to Lecter’s nonchalance. “Do you leave often?”

Lecter took a sip of his own drink, seemingly unconcerned by the heat. “Not especially. Ms. Ramirez Flores is well versed with Daiva, though.” Unlike you, is what Will read from his casual seat on the bench and the delicate tilt to his lips. The sound of agents and the few visitors who came in the half-light of not-quite-morning shuffling through the cafeteria broke into their conversation, reminding Will that for all that Lecter seemed wholly separate from the milieu, drifting through life in a strange track of his own, he was also innately part of the same society that they all were. He wasn’t that special. For all of the flamboyance and eccentricity he portrayed, and the decidedly proprietary way he raised his daughter, Lecter was also a working professional, white-collar with old money or not, and he probably sent his daughter to a public school where teachers cooed over her advanced reading and tried to teach her algebraic expressions and wanted her to play nice with other children.

Lecter probably hated those children and teachers. He had either found a school so large that Daiva could slip away unnoticed, or so small that she could pretend to be introverted when she, very obviously, loved people with the passion of someone who had never been taught to understand them. A strange thing for a psychiatrist to do to a child, but how much time did Lecter spend with her anyway? For her to have been so attached and so quick to heel at his every thought, perhaps Lecter was more distanced than Will had originally thought.

Lecter worked strange and long hours, like Will’s father as well. But unlike Will, Daiva was no latchkey kid. He could feel his jaw working, and although Lecter seemed to have noticed his sudden withdrawal from the conversation, he only seemed patient, waiting for Will to bite something out that would give the psychiatrist a too-informed look into Will’s bleeding, prey-quick brain.

What had Lecter expected anyway, making it sound like he cared about Daiva and yet he had stood in the greenhouse watching Abigail with the same sensate expression of a parent meeting a child they had never expected? What had Will expected, anyway? Why was he so concerned about this, about Lecter, about the way that he tossed away what he had for something broken, something that Will could — 

Well, Will couldn’t handle Abigail on his own. Everyone was clear on that, from Alana to Freddie, and even though Jack was pushing him to talk to her, it was obviously in an investigative perspective, rather than anything good for her. And Hannibal seemed to pick up things as he went. How much did Daiva remember without Hannibal? Was her interest and her affection from only having him for a short while?

“-Will?”

Will blinked back sudden, reflexive tears. “Dr. Lecter,” he said with a slow-burning rage fueling him, “why do you care?”

He wasn’t sure why he was angry but it had to do with the feeling of Lecter defending him, of Lecter slyly implying — or outright saying — that Will could do as he pleased when really, Will hadn’t for so long he had nearly forgotten the rush of doing things that were not-meant-to-be-done and Lecter was somehow so ready to hand him things that there had to be a catch, and the catch was that Lecter came off as a man who took care of things, and in the end he left his daughter to a Ms. Ramirez Flores who may know Daiva as Will did not but —

“Breathe in,” said Lecter, and they were sitting outside and he was no longer drinking tea, but Lecter had a hand on Will’s shoulder and it seemed to have burned a hole through Will’s shirt, because he felt so cold that the damp air must have settled into liquid form on his bare skin. “Do you feel my hand?”

Will nodded shakily. He had excess energy that coiled under his skin and sent his heart into palpitations because Lecter’s hand between his coat and his shirt seemed too-important at this point.

“Focus on what you can feel,” said Lecter. “It is 2:30pm in Baltimore, Maryland. We are outside the Port Haven psychiatric facility and we have finished speaking to Abigail Hobbs. She is safe. She is breathing. If you are concerned about Daiva, she is at home today, and she is very careful about locks. Ms. Ramirez Flores is also quite careful.”

Will couldn’t push him away. “I’m sorry,” he said instead.

“For what?” asked Lecter. “Have you been sleeping well, Will?”

He scoffed. “Not for a while, doctor.”

“Likely stress.”

“I can sleep on the plane,” said Will. “Going to prescribe me something?” He wanted Lecter to say something, anything. Something that would let him take his hand off of Will’s shoulder.

“Only an eyemask,” said Lecter, and smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Kai_99 for all of your help! <3
> 
> Notes: I'm ambiguous on Daiva's age, and I want to clarify that she really looks Nothing Like Hannibal, but when someone is introduced as a daughter, you try really hard to find similarities. Like Will notices, the only commonalities are actually their expressions.


End file.
